[Jewelry making - Article 00039] - Re: [Orchid] Basic soldering/torch help needed

[Mark Shneyer]

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    Hello Carrie, The key with the boric acid is to avoid firescale hence
    the polishing process is reduced not eliminated.  When you solder
    anything, the piece needs to be heated to where it will take the
    solder. In the case of silver, it is such a good heat conductor that
    the whole piece will heat up even if you are soldering only the jump
    ring. As you  get better with a torch you will feel how quickly the
    heat travels and judge from there which pieces you need to coat first
    and which will be okay without it. A piece with hard to reach
    polishing spots I will usually coat. 

    When annealing finished pieces it will help preserve the detail work
    leaving you with less aggressive polishing job being needed. 

    As for the flux being redundant, I will usually always use flux even
    after firecoating. It is thicker and a more reliable coating for
    better flows. There of course are exceptions...I just soldered
    hundreds of silver jump rings on a "super chain" (Byzantine) for a
    necklace I taught my daughter to make.  If I had fluxed each link the
    coatings would have been a pain in the neck when manipulating the
    chain from link to link to find the other unsoldered links. The fire
    coat worked very well as a light flux for soldering the individual
    links. 

I hope this helps,
Mark


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