www.925-1000.com

I'm after tips and information on soldering, including tools and techniques.
One item which I eventually hope to repair (after practice) is this pair of 800 standard asparagus tongs which have been broken at an old solder repair.

Miles



.

Hi,

Best thing to do is to start practising your soldering skills on nickelsilver (alpaca, neu-silber etc) and other copper alloys.
The solder comes in various meltingpoints with the higher melt ones give the stronger bondings.
You will always want to start with the high melting ones first if you need to do multiple solderings. Lets assume you use no.7, no.5 and no.3 solders, you want to solder the vertical joints to be done with no.7 and the horizontal joints with no.5.
(no.7 having the highest meltingpoint).
That prevents the vertical lines to run afterwards and drop to the bottom.

When you make joints, make them as tightfitted as possible so the solder can suck into the joint (capulair). Also make sure the whole area where you solder is absolutely clean or the solder will not run.
Of course you will also need some soldering flux.

Hope that helped a bit.
.

Hi Miles,
In the repair of old pieces, take special care to see if there are any soft solder (lead based) repairs. Any trace of soft solder has to be removed completely or it will chemically react with the hard solder under the high heat required. The result can be catastrophic, can eat holes right through the silver.
As Doos mentioned, tight joints are key, must be a lot of surface contact, hard solder will not work as a filler.
The smallest and handiest reference I've found is "The Jeweler's Bench Reference" by Harold O'Conner. A ton of useful info in a 65 page pocket sized notebook.

Regards, Tom
.

Hello, this piece was not handhammered, but cast. That is why the silver has this spongy, foam-like structure. It is extremely difficult to have this solidly soldered. It probably needs additional reinforcement. I would hesitate to do this myself. Best wishes, Bahner
.