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Hi all, I've just finished trying out home-made silver solder. Seems to work well, i’m probably not going to use it on silver jewellry I’ll keep it for testing and practising with other materials saving on my consumption of the best stuff. Here’s a link to the video if you’re interested … https://youtu.be/u7F0r7uXstQ … cheers … Nick
Nice one @nicks I was subscribied your change do share your process on youtube and make your community much more bigger0:-)
Thanks for that Jazlyn … N
Nice one - I remember reading the Navajo made their own solder mixing the silver from coins with cartridge brass. They also filed it down to a powder and used a solder shaker to distribute the solder for sweat soldering.
I wonder if you filed it to a fine powder and mixed it with a little borax, meths and organic binder if you could make a diy solder paste? Questions would be which binder and what quantities.
At 75% sterling that'll mean that the solder is about 61.6% silver so it's a little shy of the 650 parts per thousand of the permitted minimum fineness for silver solder under the Hallmarking rules.
1.6g/1.7g of brass would bring it to around 65%. and 0.6g of brass would make a harder solder at around 80% silver.
Interesting point about hallmarking rules, i’ve not tried different ratios after discovering how well this stuff works. When working with sterling silver I wouldn’t cut corners and use cheap home-made solder I would stick to commercial stuff. However great to have around for other jobs and for testing ideas with copper. Have been meaning to try making paste solder … I now have plenty of home-made solder I could experiment with … another one for the to do list … Nick
That's a great idea bro!!
Not my idea, I read somewhere that native Americans used to mix sterling silver and bullet cartridge brass to make solder … cheers … Nick