I'm no expert but here two tricks I use which are (or were) used in other manufacturing fields like boiler making and tin-plate working.
1. Direct your blowtorch along the work. Think where the wash from the flame is going. That gas is still hot and you can use it to heat up the bits of metal that will be sapping heat from where you are working.
2. Stand your metal off surfaces. I spent ages once trying to solder a mount to a luchenbooth, it was sitting on a soldering block and that was sapping heat away. Now whenever I am soldering large pieces I make sure that they are not fully in contact with the block, air is a great insulator. To do this I tend to use pennies as little feet for the object and have as little contact between then and the piece as possible as they act as heat sinks themselves. Or use a wire wig or suspend the work over a soldering block between two other soldering blocks.
hope that helps.
It certainly sounds to me that you have two problems. As you say, chopping off the ends should help but it would be best to use a saw for this so you get nice flat ends. Your torch is also not man enough for the job. If you don't want to get a big torch, you could always use two little torches which what I often do. Good luck with it.
I found that when doing a repair job on a old dragon ring the solder didn't want to melt or flow at all as the ring was sapping the heat away for too quickly for it to even heat the solder up. running the torch flame around and around the ring made the whole piece glow red and just like that the solder melted and flowed into the joint, sometimes you just need to think outside the box your working in
Goodbye
Try and hold your bangle with one hand not easy i know, with the two ends together and then saw it, you should get a nice flush edge to solder
I bought a larger plumbers torch and gas canister from B&Q for bigger soldering jobs like that.
Em
I'm having a really hard time at the moment with my pentacle project as I am trying to solder the outer ring that wil enclose the star. I think my gap might be too big, but then it won't be long enough if I keep trimming it
I didn't think that you'd have to heat the whole thinkg as long as the joint was red hot... I'll try that.
Anyway, sorry I'm not helping with this post, but I'd like to thank all the members here for their precious advice.^_^
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