I have started making jewellery again after some 20 odd years and dug all of my old equipment out including solder. I have been trying to make a simple copper bangle but wanted to solder tips and other pieces onto it in silver. I have had a really bad time the hard solder just will not run, I have cleaned the joints and restarted several times changing flux and changing from diverse thickness to similar thicknesses, then copper to copper just to get one joint to work. I then used a roll of east solder that I inherited from someone else that is newer and much brighter who had given up and suddenly it all worked. I probably should have started with a medium or easy but I was winging the design and wasn't sure how much I would be doing so stuck to a hard.
After doubting that I still had any skills, at all I realised that the old solder peices probably need a good clean. The one thing that I haven't done was to pickle them I am assuming that this is what I need to do or are they completely unsalvagable.
Bookmarks