Hello,

I know you're going to get some sort of fire scale with sterling silver more often than not but I wonder if there are any tips on reducing it?

I find that if the wire/sheet has not been manipulated in any way, the fire scale is less or non existent. I.e. a ring made with round diameter wire that has not been flattened or anything does not tend to have fire scale. If the sterling silver is changed in any way, I get fire scale which then needs to be filed/buffed off as the pickle alone does not remove it.

Question 1: Are there any tips with soldering or solution to reduce it?

Question 2: Take a simple circle cut out of sheet, would you expect there to be fire scale after soldering a jump ring directly onto it?

Question 3 (slightly unrelated): I've used silver clay for a couple of pieces simply because I wanted a more 3D look with these pieces as I don't do casting. I've been trying to find out if you can solder sterling silver jump rings to fine silver (once the fine silver has been torch fired)...I could just try it but a) fine silver is expensive and b) I wasn't sure if there was a certain way of doing it really. Any tips would be greatly appreciated.


Thank you as always for anyone that can help. Lou x