You can use steel dressmaking pins pushed into the soldering block to hold things in place (not glass headed ones). I have successfully done this before.
I have no experience with this technique, but I looked in the 'Madeleine Coles 2 in 1 jewellery manual' and she uses plaster of paris in the same way as investment.
Just a thought (?)
J x
I used it to make moulds to slump glass into when I was at college. You do have to make sure it is TOTALLY dry though (or it tends to explode - although I would have thought that would be the same with investment powder) - which does take ages! We used to leave them on top of the massive kilns for a week!! It does tend to crumble a bit after going through the slumping process in the kiln but I'm sure it would take the heat of soldering OK. I'd wear safety specs though just in case bits fly off!
With that many tubes, you wont have enogh grades of silver solder to play with, plus silver gets hot overall anyway to take a solder properly, so the lines between using a hard med and soft solder become a bit blurry with silver, unlike gold.
Glue is a big no no, your only real option is to measure the O/D of the tubes, and get a drill that size, or just under (and a round file) and drill right through the ring, and use tight fitting holes and push the tubes right throug, slightly protruding inside, and then solder all at once as they will stay in place. Then use saw to sut off protrusions inside, and file flush.
with a hard solder, yo'ull never see the join, plus, with solder over run this is a better way to do this task, even with one tube than flush mounting on surface.
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