Printable View
Attachment 13219
Hi all,
hope you’re feeling festive if that’s your thing… I’ve fused this 1.3mm sterling silver wire with borax for a simple look cuff…. However after cleaning back I found fine porosity or pitting…. so a couple of questions to you experienced sort…. not sure what went wrong any ideas?… and can I somehow flood the ends of this bracelet with solder to fill some of the holes, giving me an opportunity to clean back for a better look.. thanks for any help…Nick
Hi Nick,
You could try re-melting it, using plenty of borax.
You could file off the more obvious pits and spread molten solder over the end with a soldering pick.
Or you could file the end smaller, and fix on a purpose made cover.
The big enemy at this stage will be the appearance of fire scale, due to repeated heating. Dennis.
What went wrong my guess is you simply crossed the the line when heating, and too much will cause pitting there is a very fine line when fusing and it is easy to cross it.
Thanks Dennis and China,
It sounds like overheating was the cause, i’ll have to be more careful next time. It was supposed to be a quick Xmas present for somebody, so I’ll try the solder and pick trick first.
Thought about remelting it but knowing my luck I could make it worse. Cap ends would look nice if I was more practised.
Would one grade of solder be better than the others for this job or are all of there viscosity’s the same when molten?
Thanks for your help … Nick
Many of us avoid medium, as it runs reluctantly.
Hard is OK but needs more heat.
Easy is good, but has a slight yellow cast.
Rocks are OK, and hard places no better. Dennis.
Ok thanks for that Dennis, i’ll give the easy option a ago…. cheers…. Nick