HI folks, Im making Xmas decorations and slowly but surely running out of solder so I need to buy more.
Is there a difference between lead free SILVER solder and lead free solder?
eg one looks more shiney, or theres a different melting point.
Thanks
Lead free silver solder is an alloy of copper and silver. If your solder does not state it is silver solder it probably won’t contain any silver. If you intended to hallmark your stuff this might be a problem. Silver solder itself comes in several varieties with different melting points: Hard, Half Hard, Easy and Extra Easy to enable you to solder different joins on the same piece. The names are self-explanatory.
What sort of solder are you currently using? When I make my jewellery pieces I only need the tiniest quantity to fix the join. Less is certainly more because then you don’t have to file away a load of excess solder. A metre long strip of solder lasts me ages (i.e. more than a year). Also if you are filing solder, because of the copper content, you should wear a mask to prevent you from breathing in the dust.
Love Sam x
Im using lead free silver solder which I use on my pendant surrounds. But Im also using it for my Xmas decorations.
Im coming to the end of that reel and wondered what I should go for(due to different price points).
I think I just answered my own question, I can use lead free silver solder on both, jewellery and decs. But I cant use lead free (no silver) solder on jewellery.
I just wondered if the different solders acted differently due to them having differing “ingredients”.
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That I don’t know-when you buy solder online it usually states what the specific melting point is. Solder can be made to melt at any temperature depending on the exact ingredients of the alloy, so easy silver solder melts at a lower temperature than hard or half hard solder. As the name suggests, hard solder is also harder than easy solder.
The way I see it is that if you have to buy a large quantity of lead-free solder but also you have to buy silver solder as well, that would be a false economy unless you could see yourself using up the lead free solder completely. But that is just my point of view. I can imagine that lead-free solder without any silver content comes in very large packages owing to the fact that tradesmen like plumbers and central heating engineers get through a lot of the stuff.
Love Sam x