SILVER CLAY AND SOLDERING
1. Clean and finish your jewellery piece in the normal way but do not add a surface patina until after the finding has been soldered. The areas that you want to solder must be very clean or the solder will not bond to it. Prepare the fired silver clay by burnishing it slightly, this helps to close the “pores” on the surface and silver clay is far more porous than traditional fine silver. . Wash the finding and the burnished area to be soldered in detergent to remove grease.
2. Make sure that the pieces to be soldered have a neat fit, solder will not fill a gap! Paint on flux paste over the areas that will be joined. Hold the fitting with some self locking tweezers. Cut a small chip of solder and place it on the are to be soldered (this can be on the sterling piece or the metal clay piece). Warm the flux gently with butane torch. The flux will go white and bubble and eventually go clear, this is the time to concentrate the flame on the piece of solder (the inner blue tip of the flame is the hottest part). The solder will start to flow and you can then place your fitting into place, keep the heat on the join for few seconds in case you lost any heat on the solder. Remove the heat and quench in water. Test your join by tugging. If the fitting comes undone, either your flux was not melted sufficiently or the solder was not quite flowing and needs re-heating. Flux and start again. Do not make the mistake of using a large amount of solder it is not necessary and will take ages to heat correctly—you only need a little chip!
3. You will need to clean off the flux residue and fire scale by placing in pickle. We stock a natural pickle for home jewelers which is completely safe. Heat the pickle and pop the silver items in. Alternatively you can use pickling vinegar! Heat up with a lid on as the smell is awful, take a little longer but does the job if you are stuck!
IMPORTANT ASPECTS OF SOLDERING
Clean joint free from grease. A good join. Heat the flux until it is clear. Make sure the soldering is flowing before joining. Do not overload with solder.
SOLDERING JUMP RINGS
Close the jump ring tightly, paint with flux. Use a solder pick and flux it. Heat the flux on both the jump ring and solder pick until clear. Cut a small chip of solder and heat it on your firing brick, pick it up using your soldering pick it will stick on allowing you to move the solder to the join. Concentrate the heat on the join and the solder will come away from the pick and flow into the join of the jump ring.
