Soldering cut nails

[Ruedeleglise]

What am I doing wrong? I am trying to silver solder some reclaimed cut nails together. They are rusty old reclaimed nails. I clean them up where I want to join them. Flux the sufaces and the hard solder , sandwich all three components together and then heat. About 1 in 10 solder successfully. All the others fall apart!


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[CJ57]

I thought it was the rust but OH tells me it’s the heating point of the nails as well as the dirt. He reckons you’d need to weld them not silver solder

[Dennis]

Yes, you would succeed with a larger torch, or much lower flowing solder, such as easy or extra easy. The heat need not be spread, but can be concentrated on the joint area.
It also occurs to me that you might be using paste which tends to disintegrate under direct heat. Use pallions of strip solder instead.
You could use a more aggressive flux such as Tenacity No5, but borax should do it. Dennis.

[Ruedeleglise]

Thanks all for your input.
Ah....I have been using hard solder and Kline Techo flux. First retry will be easy solder. Odd that just occasionally the soldering worked! These nails are only 55mm long so would be very difficult for me to weld with my inverter welder. Probably end up with melted nails and a blob of weld!


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[ps_bond]

There's also lower-content silver brazing rods available that will do the job. I'd go with Tenacity if soldering, but so long as they're clean borax should work as Dennis says.
As for welding, my immediate thought was forge welding rather than electrical, but you'll struggle to maintain the shape as you set the weld.

[china]

45% silver brazing rod, the area must be scrupulously clean, as said above borax based flux should be suitable, plus all pieces must up to the correct heat
as a alternative you could gas weld with oxy/acetylene

[Ruedeleglise]

Yes, easy solder helped a lot. It took increased GBH to break the join! The question is how long is a piece of string. How much GBH should it take to break this joint? I assume all soldered joints have a failure point.


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[Dennis]

Yes, easy solder helped a lot. It took increased GBH to break the join! The question is how long is a piece of string. How much GBH should it take to break this joint? I assume all soldered joints have a failure point. Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

Yes, two nails crossed and soldered, will give way with twisting. That is why cautious jewellers would devise a further strengthening strategy, such as matching grooves between them. Dennis.

[Ruedeleglise]

Ah yes. I may try binding the join with copper wire. Could make a nice colour contrast.


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