Hi!

I'm VERY new to the whole concept of jewellery making, and finding the amount of stuff I need to learn is amazing!

I'm trying to teach myself from books and YouTube etc. which started well, but I am well and truly stumped by soldering jump rings!

I just can't seem to get it right. I'm using silver 8mm heavy jump rings. I've tried "easy" strip which I've cut tiny chunks from (after filing the end clean), and also "medium" paste. I'm filing the jump ring surfaces and then using fine every paper, not touching them afterwards, and closing them tight closed by twisting slightly sideways until I can't see any gaps.
Fluxing with borax, then popping either a tiny piece of the strip on top or else a blob of paste. (Have also tried the paste on its own since it contains flux).
Heating it gently with a soft flame, I see the flux dry and expand, then it appears to shrink back down again so I can see the ring more clearly again.
Then one of two things happen.
Either I get the solder to melt and flow, but it DOESN'T flow into the joint leaving the ring with a split.
Or I seem to get a crust forming and it seems almost impossible to get the solder to melt properly, leaving the ring still with a split and a lump of solder (possibly melted slightly in to a ball shape), sat on top!

It looks so easy on the YouTube videos, but I've now wasted around 20 jump rings and am getting nowhere!

I tried a small butane gas soldering blowtorch but this has a very hot and fine flame so I then moved on to a larger butane torch that I use for firing silver metal clay. I can't really affordŁ120-150 for the fancy looking torches, and I was told that the little soldering one I bought should be fine for jump rings.

Any idea what I'm doing wrong please?

Thanks