Soldering problem?

I have made a very simple wide band ring which I have made time and time again with no problems until now ... I soldered this ring together using hard solder and hammered with the rawhide hammer on the mandrel to shape gently annealed and rehammered to texture removed from the mandrel and started to polish when the seam split. I thought perhaps I'd not soldered it enough so cleaned the seam up and soldered with a bit more hard solder went through the process again and it split... so three attempts later and the seam keeps splitting. Why might this be happening?

I've checked the seam is aligned and snug (no gaps at all) I solder with the light out or dimmed and watch for the solder the flow which it does and once cooled I tug at the seam to make sure it's secure before pickling and moving on. I just dont know what I am doing wrong!

Any advice?

Sent from my GT-I9300 using Tapatalk

If your solder join is sound to begin with, then it may be that a combination of annealing after soldering and hammering twice (to round it and texture it) is overstressing the join. How much bigger (in terms of ring sizes) does the ring become from just after soldering the join to the point where you start to polish and the seam splits?

Its a mystery, Vanessa. My immediate reaction is that the material for the shank might be too thin after all that hammering, as very hard very thin silver is not that strong at the join.

You've succeeded before, so in your place I would just begin again with fresh material.

Aurarius /Dennis I used 1mm thick silver and once made up and hammered and so on its not that much bigger it's still a nice snug fit on my finger. Now what I didn't make clear (possibly because I was annoyed) was that I only used the rawhide and texturing hammer first time round. The other times the seam was splitting when I began polishing it up. I wasn't doing anything particularly rough with it.

I was so annoyed with the damn thing I shoved it in the pickle and left it (I couldn't even look at it I felt defeated ha ha)

Anyway I decided to not let it defeat me and soldered it today and it behaved itself impeccably. I didn't do anything different either. its just one of those mysteries. I've polished it and am now thinking about how much I want to LOS it. I made my sister some wrapped earrings that I dipped the wrapped parts in LOS and loved how they slowly turned a warm golden colour (it was a happy discovery) and I am wondering if I can replicate that again with my ring. Anyway that's wandering onto something else.

Thanks for your advice. :)

Sent from my GT-I9300 using Tapatalk