[Jewelry making - Article 00834] - Re: [Orchid] Do small butane soldering torches work?

[Gail Smith]

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    Yo, brian. I don't cast with propane, because I believe in filling
    my kiln.  I use oxy-acetylene. I have melted (with successful casts)
    500 gm. of bronze(using the cutting torch), which has a higher flow
    point than 18K gold.  My point is that no one torch does it all.  Do
    you want to take your MECO torch and use it to repair a chafing dish
    that's broken at the join?  Sterling or plate? Does it matter?
    Should you do it? What do you tell the customer? i can fix it with a
    hardware store propane torch.  The discussion has been all about
    control, but, when you're dealing with silver, or larger pieces,
    control equals flame size! I can solder in a heartbeat what would
    take a hoke torch 10-15 minutes, AND with little or no firescale
    (because I haven't fried the metal) It's NOT appropriate for gold. I
    use a butane microtorch for lighting my cigarettes and soldering
    links, but if I'm soldering silver, I grab my plumber's torch.  For
    very large pieces, (you have to consider surface area when heating-
    I use the plumber's torch to heat the piece and a large tip smith to
    solder- I'm talking raisings here- surface area 24 inches+, and I
    avoid easy solder like the plague. I've done this successfully with
    copper, brass, bronze, and sterling- gold would be a financial
    stretch- but if I working gold in this size range, I'd want a
    plumber's torch.  I'm not saying it's quicker, because jigging up
    the piece is involved, but it solders very fast, about 1/5th of the
    time of a Hoke tip.  Maybe I'm nuts (I hope the metallurgists will
    weigh in) but from my basic understanding of metal- the longer you
    are heating it , the greater your chances are for oxygen
    contamination and fire scale, and my experience has born that out.
    So- for an entry level jeweler who (because of materials costs) is
    going to working primarily in silver(or brass and copper), a
    plumber's torch is the way to go. 

Ciao
Gail

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