[Jewelry making - Article 00272] - Re: [Orchid] Pripps' flux won't adhere

[Peter W . Rowe]

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>        and it's great stuff, but when it comes to larger silversmithing
>     scale pieces, it 's hard to get  the spray into certain awkward
>     spaces and also takes sooo much blowing. It would be such a boon if
>     it could just be brushed on. 

    Kay, if you're need is for fire stain protection during annealing,
    and not with soldering, such as is often the case when
    silversmithing, where one needs to anneal frequently, you should
    investigate a concoction mixed up by the late Richard Thomas while he
    was at Cranbrook, to solve this very question.  Unlike Prips, which
    uses both boric acid and borax, this mix, which he called
    "ring-a-ding" (after that bell going off in your head when you
    suddenly find an answer to a question).  It's got two components. 
    One is boric acid.  And the other is a high tech surfactant.  Plain
    boric acid is known to be effective for preventing fire scale when
    used on gold (boric acid and alcohol is a jewelers standard, after
    all), but has problems with silver because it doesn't adhere, and
    pulls away from the surface on heating.  Ring-a-ding solves this
    with the surfactant, a material called Aerosol OT-solid, which acts to
    keep the boric acid as it heats up, wetting the silver surface.  The
    mix is used by just dipping the work in it, or brushing it on.  After
    annealing, the surface is not quite as bright as is the case with
    prips, but ends up slightly dusty looking, but you will not have the
    formation of fire stain or fire scale.  It acts, for reasons I don't
    know, as almost an anti flux for soldering, so if you use it in
    conjunction with soldering operations, you have to be careful to
    keep it away from the joints, or the solder will not flow well there.
     As with prips flux, ring-a-ding is a home brew concoction, and due
    to the need for the surfactant, a bit more bother to make, as that's
    not an everyday material.  Metalsmith magazine published the recipe a
    number of years ago (ten or fifteen?), and others here on Orchid may
    know it as well.  There may even be some firms who now make it.  At
    one time, C.R.Hill in Detroit mixed it up (They're just down the road
    from Cranbrook), but even Richard Thomas was not happy with the way
    they mixed it (too dilute, as a liquid, rather than a slurry), and my
    own single purchase of their version, back in the early 80s, also
    suggested that they'd got it wrong.  Not sure if they still try to
    make it.   We had it available routinely, to students, when I was in
    college and grad school, so I know several schools provide it in the
    studios.  So someone out there knows the recipe...  It does solve the
    problem of easy application, and works reasonably well so long as you
    can tolerate a slight loss of surface polish, which obviously is not
    an issue when you're just going back to hammering on a piece of
    metal. 

cheers
Peter Rowe

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