I Learned a Valuable Soldering Lesson.

I will start this post out with  *Sigh*. You know they kind of sigh when you already knew the correct way, then strayed away then came back to it? Too me, soldering is a lot like poker, you can learn how to do it in an hour but it takes a lifetime to become good at it.

It all started with the wide rings I make and sell on Etsy. These rings are up to 1 and 1/4" wide, beastly right? I usually make them around the 3/4" width but sometimes I get custom requests. One of the wide rings I make is a gigantic half round ring shank with the middle being 2mm thick. The only way you are forming that into a ring is with pliers, there is not a lot of manipulation to be done with your hands. So I get the seam closed and almost light tight, then run a saw blade through it like we all do. You have to be very careful that your saw blade doesn't stray off course or you will be doing a lot of filing to fix it and downsizing the ring inadvertently.

I should have been soldering the seam like I always had been, with the correct amount of hard solder. I used to only use hard solder because it has the highest silver content and keeps its color the longest. What do I do instead of chip soldering the right amount? I stick solder easy flow and flood the seam with enough solder to fill any gaps that I was unable to file flat. Its so disappointing that I went that route instead of doing it right.

The problem with easy flow solder is it turns black way before the sterling does and you can see the seam in as early as a week or two I recently found out. I know this because a lady sent one back to be re-sized and I was horrified and embarrassed when I opened the return shipment. Not only was I able to see my line where I soldered it, I also saw little black pools of where I left solder on the ring. I couldn't see it at the time because I used 400 grit sandpaper then took it to the polishing wheel. Everything looked perfectly shiny when I sent it off. I am grateful that I hadn't been doing that wrong technique on very many rings. I know better than that, that's the worst part.

This whole experience made me think, can we use Argentium solder on sterling silver to prevent the seam from showing up eventually? Its not a problem on regular sized rings but for these wide bands, everything shows up. Or if I am soldering and sanding, polishing and buffing properly, should a line never show up no matter how much time passes?