Questionhi peter. i am a jeweler by trade and a silversmith by lack of $ for gold ;) I have recently had some 14k castings done and am attempting to solder them with hard plumb solder. so far so good...but when i pickle the pieces the dark brownish oxidation isn't coming off. I am using standard sparex (which has been working fine for the silver) and a white past flux. do i need to use anything special? also, is it ok to tumble-vibe the gold and silver together or do i need to do separate batches for each material? thanks so much!
-gold newbie rachel
AnswerGreetings,
I am unsure of a few of your prodicts, however, I would suggest that you use silver solder at least, which you can obtain from any precious metal or jewellery supply house.
In fact you should be using solder of the same Karat and colour of your metal if you can, but if not, the silver solder will work fine.
I would use a simple 10% sulphuric acid pickle at around 50C. That will clean all oxide and flux, which I suggest should be a tenacity flux...and if yours is working on silver then it shoud be fine on 14K.
As far as I know, mixing metal in the tumbler is fine. The only thing you need to be aware of is that the differnet metals have different hardnesses, so you may find a great finish on one and so so on the other.
Hope that helps, P
