[Jewelry making - Article 00356] - Re: [Orchid] Frustrated reticulation & fusing

[Karen Goeller]

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    Hi Sue, I'm going to try and tackle the fusing part of your question,
    seeing as how many others have replied about reticulation.  I do
    fusing quite a lot and love the technique. 

    There are a couple of hidden "gotchas" when fusing.  The first is
    that the metals need to be really clean before you start.  I usually
    pickle and thoroughly rinse my pieces right before sitting down to a
    session of fusing -- that way, I can be reasonably sure that there
    aren't any oxides hanging around to interfere with the process. 
    Polishing compound or grease from your fingers will also interfere. 

    Next, I dip all the pieces in my denatured alcohol / boric acid dip.
    If I were using Prip's flux, I'd do that instead at this point. Once
    dipped, I touch the torch to the pieces and let the alcohol burn off,
    leaving my nice even layer of boric on all sides of the piece. This
    cleans it a bit more, but also retards / prevents firescale, which
    can be a real problem when fusing silver. 

    Now I arrange my pieces that I'm going to work with, laying them in
    a flat dish where I can easily reach them.  I've found that fusing
    seems to work a lot better on a charcoal block than on a soldering
    pad or firebrick.  I believe the reducing atmosphere of the charcoal
    helps the fusing occur without overdue oxidation -- you get a cleaner
    fuse and can do more layers without pickling than otherwise.  Again,
    that's my personal experience -- others may have different ones. 

    I place my backing piece, if I'm using one, on the charcoal block,
    flux it completely, and use a medium-sized flame, fairly bushy, to
    bring it up to temp.  Because I'm not using a Little Torch, my tip
    numbers won't correspond to yours, so I won't confuse you with them. 
    Basically, I'm looking for a mid-range flame size to bring the entire
    backing piece up to temp fairly quickly. 

    Once the backing piece is at roughly soldering temp (I can tell by
    my flux), I start adding my shapes and other pieces to be fused.  I
    dip each one in flux before placing it, taking care to keep the
    entire base piece at a steady temp, right around soldering temp.  I
    "sharpen" the focus of my flame at this point, and actually reduce
    the flame size slightly.  When I place a piece, I concentrate the
    torch on the area surrounding and including that piece, until I see
    the "mercury flash" around the edge of the piece that tells me it's
    fused.  Once I see that, I get the flame away quickly, let that area
    cool a TINY bit while getting my next piece fluxed and positioned. 

    When I've got enough fusing done, I let the piece air cool for a bit
    before quenching and pickling.  I don't want to hear a "sizzle" when
    it hits the water quench, basically.  The thermal shock of quenching
    too hot on a fused piece can actually cause pieces to rip themselves
    off, if the pieces fused are of dramatically different sizes. 

    Working this way, I've done 7 or more overlapping layers before
    needing to pickle, and I very rarely have a piece come loose in the
    pickle.  When I do have one come loose, it's usually a sphere or odd
    shape that simply didn't have enough contact with the underlying
    surfaces to bond well. 

    I hope this helps -- it's a fun technique to play around with once
    you get the hang of it. 

Karen Goeller
kgoeller AT nolimitations.com

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