Ok I hope my questions aren't getting tiring, but I'm here with a few more! I have gone back to some of the posts here more than once to reread the advice and it is very helpful but I'm still unsure about some things.

If using solder paste, do you spread the back of the piece to be soldered as if buttering bread or just place blobs of it about? And when soldering small round silver balls, I try to file one side flat but if using strip solder, it's almost impossible to get the ball to sit on top of the pallions so I place it alongside the ball which seems to mostly work out ok. Is this the best way?

I've practiced heating silver to watch it melt and practiced soldering scrap pieces. I've learned I was heating my metal too rapidly in most cases. I still continue to have issues with solder paste though, seems it either crumbles into nothing or it's not heated enough and the solder breaks off during pickling. I'd like to get the hang of it though for soldering small detailed pieces together. Strangely my practice pieces using solder paste worked out great, though I used what felt like too much paste in order to watch how it worked better. Maybe I am not using enough paste on my real projects?

Current experimental piece I'm working on contains many small silver balls and wires soldered to a flat piece of silver. I used an easy strip solder on some bits and easy solder paste on other bits and soldered it all at the same time. The bits that were soldered with paste fell off in the pickle pot and the bits soldered with strip stayed on. It is getting pretty frustrating actually. Now I will need to resolder the bits that fell off and hope I don't ruin the previously soldered parts.