Hi. I'm new here. Just started jewellery making. Went on a course some years ago. Anyway got the basic kit I need and some copper sheet to practice on before working on silver. So I'm starting with a simple textured copper pendant which will have a little silver square sweat soldered onto it. I've been careful not to hammer where the silver square will be.
The copper square is 4cms square. I cut 2, one from 1mm sheet and one from 0.5mm sheet. My problem. Is that I cannot get the solder to flow. I'm using easy flo powder which I'm mixing as instructed and like they show on you tube. I'm not heating the solder itself but the whole piece. I'm using easy silver solder. I know that cleaning is important and I've used lots of different cleaning but nothing works. I've also tried with a borax cone. Still nothing. I was using a proxxon micro torch and worried that it was getting to a high enough heat so now using a macro flame butane torch. Both seem to annealing perfectly and when I tried to melt solder on a smaller price of copper and then silver it worked initially but when. I've tried since nothing.
Just to clarify my intention is to melt the solder onto the copper and then sweat solder the silver piece onto by heating the copper side
I'm getting so frustrated as I just don't know what I'm doing wrong. I've carefully watched every you tube video going. Help. I've tried everything evening for a week now. Any advice would really be appreciated. Thanks in advance.
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