i'm going to give you a couple of tips
that should help you if you're new at
working with sterling silver these are
some of the things that i see people
making the most mistakes with
the first thing is when it comes to
soldering silver
that
the silver solder tends to want to jump
to one side or the other of a joint or
it won't flow through the joint and what
i see happen happening more than
anything the biggest problem is this
right here
this is a green self pickling flux that
was designed to be used on gold and i
see so many new silversmiths that when
they're having trouble they i go into
their shop and they say you know look i
just can't make it work and i see that
on their desk right there and what i
don't see
is this right here
this is a white paste cream flux
and
the difference between
this and this
when it comes to gold doesn't have much
of a impact but when it comes to silver
it's night and day
this is trying to keep your solder from
flowing
so
first thing you need to do and this is
at any commercial jewelry supply house
and this happens to be called dandix
flux but any white
cream
soldering flux will work with silver
secondly
one of the biggest problems i see with
silver
is that when somebody is going to solder
a ring
what they do
it's like this thing
okay so
if
we size this ring for instance and we
want to solder it right across here
the last place
that you want to put this right here
is right there
and i mean literally the last place you
want to put it there and most people get
ready to start soldering by putting that
torch right there first okay
now let me explain something about the
differences or the principle of thermal
dynamics and thermal transfer and that
is heat is going to go to the coldest
point so if i'm trying to control my
heat up here at the top of this ring and
i'm putting my torch up here because
heat is going to the coldest point my
heat is coming down here
so all of a sudden i no longer have
control up on the top because all my
heat's at the bottom so what i'm going
to do
is i'm going to start
down here at the bottom
okay
i'm going to heat the sides of this up
i'm going to heat my tweezers up real
good
and i'm going to get everything hot and
once again like i said the last place i
want to be is up on the top because if
this is where i want my solder to flow
that
right now because i haven't gotten close
to it with a torch yet this is my
coldest point okay so now if i've gotten
this hot i bring my torch right in here
to do the work all of a sudden my heat
is going to stay right in there
lastly one of the tips i want to show
you and this is about how to get a
really good finish on
silver this is a ring here that i just
sized
and so i filed it across here and i've
got it all blended in
so now
in order to make it shiny
i'm going to take 400 sandpaper okay i'm
going to come in here and i'm going to
take my file marks off
now with gold
you can go straight to your polishing
wheel now
and go to your tripoli and rouge
but
silver doesn't polish as well as gold so
what i'm going to do is next i'm going
to go up to
a 600 paper
okay i'm going to take my 600 paper
[Music]
and now
now the coarse scratches
that were left by the file were removed
by the 400 and the coarse
sandpaper marks were now removed by the
600 sandpaper
now it's starting to even get a shine on
it and now if you want to take it one
step beyond that
you can take it up
to a 1500 paper 1500 is almost shiny
but the more work you spend here with
your sandpapers the less work you're
going to spend at your polishing wheel
and this is where your finish is going
to be
created is your prep work here and now
as you can see at 1500
this ring is almost polished