5 SECRETS TO PERFECT SILVER SOLDERING!

[Music] hello I'm Greg Greenwood and welcome to my studio many students ask why am I having a hard time silver soldering one time it works and the next time it doesn't there are five secrets to perfect silver soldering every time number one is clean metal remove any oxides from the surface of the silver remove masking tape residue marks from pencils or marking pins polishing or buffing compounds any grease or oils even fingerprints will stop solder from flowing the fix is to pickle it use Emery cloth or Emery sticks steel wool scotch brite soar even ultrasonic cleaning number two is a good fit all pieces must have excellent contact with each other silver solder will not fill up gaps bend the metal to fit file the metal to fit instead of having to kerf pieces that fit at one tiny spot file a flat surface on both pieces to give maximum touch which will give a stronger solder joint number three is flux coverage flux must cover the entire surface to be soldered when the flux is heated it forms a glassy film over the surface of the silver and this prevents oxygen from the torch and the environment from touching the silver surface and forming oxides you will never be able to solder with oxides on your silver number four is solder placement the solder palin's must be touching both pieces of silver that you are soldering the solder is not melted by the torch the solder is melted by the pieces of silver becoming hot enough to melt the silver solder melts by indirect Heat if the palin's are only touching one piece of the silver when the silver gets hot enough to melt the solder the solder will only flow onto the one piece and not in the silver joint solder must touch both pieces of silver and last but not at least is even heat to get the solder to flow into the solder joint both pieces of silver must come up to the melting temperature of the solder at the same time if not the solder will flow onto the piece of silver that is at the melting temperature it's as simple as that keep a close eye on the flux this will help you gauge the temperature of the silver and help you guide to the melting of the solder this will become easier with experience just solder solder solder let's do some soldering and see how these secrets can help you solder perfectly every time I would like to show you two common solder joints that you'll be using often when making your jewelry number one a wire butt joint and number two a sheet strip solder joint we will go through the steps of soldering and I'll show you how the five secrets are used in each step let's take a closer look as you remember the first secret is clean metal I've already taken these two wires and pickled them so I've removed the oxide layers the second way would be to use some Emery cloth or Emery paper an emery stick steel wool or scotch brite and it's really oily and greasy you can use an ultrasonic cleaner the second secret is good fit you can use a file to file the metal and make sure that you have a good fit with the two pieces that you're soldering in this case with the circle I didn't want to file because it might be a little bit inaccurate so what I did was I overlapped the two wires and then where they overlapped I took a jeweler saw and sawed down between the two pieces and sawed both ends off at the same time this made sure that there was a perfect fit then you can take wires also to make a good fit is to bend them so in this case here I can bend it back into position and then I'll have a perfect fit so filing or signed or and/or bending the third secret is flux coverage so we'll paint the flux on the solder joint get it in the entire area and then we'll burn off the excess flux right now I want to place my solder on there that's the horse secret is solder placement get it right so it's touching both sides evenly and there we go we have a nice smooth solder joint right here where the solder melted down in between the two because we had even heat on both side that's the fifth secret is to heat evenly so it doesn't run to one side or the other and it flowed right in the solder joint so we have a perfect solder joint here here's our finished solder joint right in here a little bit of solder left on the solder joint to be cleaned up we can file that down use our Emery cloth and then steel wool and that will blend right into the two and you'll never see that seam at all now let's take a look at sheet metal here's two pieces that I have that we're going to be soldering in this position here I'll solder this one on top of the flat sheet but again we have our secrets of soldering the first one is clean metal and again I've pickle these so there's no oxides on them and we can clean them up with again our Emery cloth Emery paper steel wool scotch brights and ultrasonic cleaning the second secret is a good fit this piece we're going to be soldering on top of this one and as you can see this one is bent and it's really not a very good fit so how do we fix that well we're going to have to get this flat so 3li the easiest way is to either push it down and try to smooth it down flat or we can take a rawhide mallet and tap on it this won't hurt the surface of it because it's a rawhide mallet and that will smooth it down if we just tap on our bench block it will become perfectly flat and then the other piece will fit on it really nice but let's say the edge of this one is not very flat and smooth and lends itself to a perfect fit how do we solve that problem we can file you can use your file and file that bottom flat and a really neat way of doing that is to take your file lay it on the bench and take your metal in your hand and you can start rubbing it on the file and this will file that area flat after you file that you can take your Emery cloth set it on the bench and start rubbing with the Emery cloth and this will smooth out that bottom area where we're going to solder we'll put the two together and you can see it's a really good fit now we're almost ready to solder the third secret is flux coverage so we'll paint the entire surface it's going to be soldered with the flux just lift this up sure we get plenty of flux in there and then we'll burn off the excess flux we're all bubbles and boils it's that extra water off we'll place our solder so that's the fourth secret is solder placement I'm sure that we covered the pieces of solder with flux because they will oxidize to don't you let that end and put another pan you're not sure we cover it with flux and we'll put it on this end covering both sides and touching both pieces of solder so now we have our secret it was the solder placement and now the last one is even heat so heat both pieces of metal up evenly that the pelean dar touching both surfaces I'm going to put a little extra heat on that bottom one and there it goes and then I'll run it along the seam and the other one and there we have the side or running along the entire scene of the sheet silver here's our sheet metal right out of the pickle nice and clean and a really nice sharp solder seam along the entire bottom of this top piece that we sat it on we only use the two small pal Ian's at either end and we were able to draw the solder in and along the seam remember you don't need an awful lot of solder to solder a sheet silver solder seam just a little bit and you can draw it right along the edge let's review the five secrets number one clean metal number two is good fit number three flux coverage for solder placement and five even heat by keeping these five secrets in mind as you are soldering you will increase your success chances 100% if only one of these steps is not done your success rate will be a zero percent I hope you enjoyed this video and learn some helpful tips that will make your soldering experience more successful and pleasurable please leave a comment and let me know any questions or any other topics that you would find helpful don't forget to subscribe below and thanks for watching see you next time [Music]

Channel: Greg Greenwood

Views: 70,903

Rating: 4.9391861 out of 5

Keywords: how to solder, soldering tutorial, jewelry making, jewelry making tutorials, jewelry making tutorials soldering, designer craftsman jewelry, sterling silver jewelry, greg greenwood jewelry, making jewelry, silver soldering tools, soldering overview, sterling silver, silver soldering, silver solder, silver soldering jewelry, how to silver solder, silver soldering for beginners, soldering tutorial for beginners, soldering correctly, basic soldering tutorial

Id: oLy9rQn7ZTA

Length: 13min 47sec (827 seconds)

Published: Fri May 01 2020