[Jewelry making - Article 00231] - Re: [Orchid] Argentium solders and fluxing

[Trevor F]

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>     This is probably a question(s) for Trevor. 

Hello Grace, 

    What a fine set of questions! Some I have answers to, others are
    going to be a guess. Here we go: 

>     Will the argentium solders stay cleaner? 

    My guess is yes. The soldered joints certainly stay cleaner so that's
    (partially) what I'm basing my "yes" on. Time will tell. 

>     Soldering on a regular firebrick from above. What do I flux? 

    I'd say treat your Argentium Silver (AS) like AS and your regular
    sterling like regular sterling. So, if it were me doing this piece
    I'd firecoat the regular sterling and flux the joint. 

>     I will probably have to buff and polish which means the sterling
>     and AS components will be cleaned with the same buff. Is that
>     contaminating the buffs? 

    Ya, probably a little. If you can rake the buffs before polishing I'd
    suggest using your regular sterling buffs and hoping for the best.
    Personally I hate raking buffs so I'd opt for smaller wheels --the
    little flexshaft jobbies-- in order to use AS dedicated buffs on the
    AS and regular sterling buffs on the sterling bits. In all honesty
    though that's probably being a little manic about the whole thing. 

    Pickle is a different story. I do not use pickle that has seen
    regular sterling on my AS. I can't confirm that it causes problems
    but it smacks of bad karma to me. I have two sets of pickle: one for
    AS and one for regular sterling. 

    If it were me I'd mix a small batch of clean pickle, use it for my
    mixed metals work and then dump it into my "regular sterling" pickle
    batch. That way you won't just be throwing it away but you won't be
    contaminating your AS pickle either. I think you're just going to
    have to pick one direction or the other and go for it. 

Cheers,
Trevor F.
in The City of Light
www.touchmetal.com

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