Originally Posted by
susieq
Soldering with me is still somewhat hit and miss although getting better with advice given on the forum - I generally use borax but recently for a chain with lots of jump rings I have used auflux.
The advantage of auflux was that my pallions of solder didn't dance like demented fleas as I heated the piece - the pallions stayed where they were placed before flowing; the downside was that as I am not very experienced in soldering and it was hard to tell when the rings were the correct temperature for the solder to flow as there was no change in colour of the auflux.
With borax, I can see the various changes in colour of the flux and have a much better understanding of when piece is heated enough for the solder to flow; the downside is that I need to heat slowly to stop the solder jumping off the join first and even then no matter how careful I am they often still jump off. I have tried pick soldering, but have had little success at this as once balled up the solder seems to stick to everything but the join I am trying to attach it to.
My biggest problem, other than crappy solder joins, is fire scale. I tend to just use borax on the metal to protect it, but sometimes it seems to flake off when heating. I'm assuming this is because the metal isn't completely grease free, but I pickle and rinse first which I would have thought would clean it enough, but doesn't. I do use the green scourers/emery paper to clean up joints first, but find it hard not to end up rounding up the edges I'm wanting to solder.
I guess the answer is practice practice and then practice some more.
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