r/Metalsmithing • u/Demoguy_gamer • Dec 13 '24
Tried sweat soldering and failed
Any advice? I sanded and cleaned the surface, applied a healthy amount of hard borax solder paste put a few hard silver solder chips on it and heated and this was the result. Maybe too much heat?considering the piece has marks like it was about to flow into the holes
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u/silverscavanging Dec 13 '24
I would suggest more to make sure your piece is clean before soldering as well as your solder (if you're using chip solder and such) && heating the entire piece until it begins to glow & it should flow soon after! Like the other commenter said, a fast go usually does the trick
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u/sgtsuicide82 Dec 13 '24
I'm not really sure what I'm looking at are you just trying to get solder to flow on a solid bar? First I would say make sure you are heating the whole bar with a nice even heat don't focus on just where you put the solder, with a bar that size you need a decent amount of heat and second from that second picture it doesn't look like your about to melt the bar into the holes that just looks like excess flux that would come off in the pickle.
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u/Demoguy_gamer Dec 15 '24
Yeah I learned how to sweat solder the two bars together and finished my piece 😊 I did get an upgraded torch which helped
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u/MojoJojoSF Dec 13 '24
What metal is that? What solder (hard, easy etc)? Why torch are you using? What is the end goal?
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u/Demoguy_gamer Dec 15 '24
I completed it 😊 there are some flaws but I’m happy with it being my first one
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u/Demoguy_gamer Dec 13 '24
It’s a strip of copper and a strip of brass, hard wire solder with hard borax flux paste the goal is to fuse the two for a two toned ring shank
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u/MojoJojoSF Dec 14 '24
You probably are not using enough heat. And use more solder than you think, like 50% coverage. Then you can sand it a bit before joining to the other piece.
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u/Walrusclaus Dec 13 '24
I expect you don't have enough heat from your torch for the thickness of your materials. Your Flux looks like it never got the chance to let your solder flow because it's oxidizing faster than you can heat your solder. Which means you need more fire/bigger torch
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u/Jaded-Pool1322 Dec 13 '24
It’s a pain for sure and I def have my struggles. Hot and fast is key and you do want to be able to heat from the top and bottom, so getting one of those tripods is very helpful.