Koruja jalometallista

Soldering part 2

//  by 

So in this post I will go through some pieces we’ve soldered in class.

Note that we initially used copper for soldering, due to its high melting point. Silver is much more trickier to solder, due to its low melting point, and its heat-conduciveness. We initially soldered flat pieces, but pretty quickly we soldered our first hollow form: A silver ball.

Soldering a hollow form. Perfectly round ball. This is the final product.
  • Paste-soldered fold.
  • sweat-soldered.
  • Note how the piece is ”smiling” or the solder has not flown evenly and a gap has appeared.
  • Sweat-soldered.
  • Paste-soldered with soft solder.
  • Hard, medium, and soft-solder.
  • Soldered piece. I initially soldered the links shut with hard solder, then I used hard, medium and soft solder to attach the links to the sheet. Note how elementary my solder skills are at this point. All the links are tightly soldered, but I have used way too much solder to the point is has clogged the seams and flown to areas where it wasn’t supposed to flow.
Inspecting my solder piece. Note how nice the initial side looks, and how the other side has visible gaps

After these practice sessions, I created a hollow form out of copper. Some notes on them:

  • Solder seam on the initial ball.
  • Notice how the first ball is more of an egg-shape than ball-shape.
  • Egg-shape was caused by not measuring the piece while forming it, as well as over-forming.
  • Lower ball has gone through mirror finish. The egg ball was left as it is.
  • Note that I did not flip the pieces, causing some of the solder to flow through the hole in the bottom.
  • Attaching the solder to the inside of the ball.

So after the copper solder training I started on the hollow silver form.

  • The start of the hollow forms: I initially cut two disks with a disk cutter, then formed them into half-balls with forming block. Note that in order to create a right sized ball, some math will be involved.
Filing the scraps from the side before forming the half-ball form.
Our teacher going through the use of the forming block. Note that the forming ball is always a size smaller than the form in the block.
Attaching medium solder balls to the inside of the hollow form.
soldering the two sides together.

Most important things in this project were:

The soldered surfaces are clean! I sanded the seams with emery paper and tried not to touch them with my hands afterwards.

Also note that the half-ball with the solder balls attached is on the top now. This enables the gravity to work before the capillary action takes hold.

Also it is preferred that the metals wouldn’t move during the solder process. I took the risk and went with my instinct, but it would take the guesswork out of it if I had attached the balls more securely.

The final product is very impressive, and I am pretty grateful I am able to produce a product like this.