Comparing Soldering Platforms | Jewelry

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There are many ways to approach soldering bezels and many jewelry making tools and materials available to make this process flow (pun intended!) more seamlessly (yes, another pun!). Seriously, over time, there are more options for soldering than ever before and more soldering platforms to choose from than ever before. Each soldering platform offers its own benefit and Tom and Kay Benham help uncover the benefits of their tried and true favorites.

Tom and Kay Benham have been our leading “Ask the Experts” columnists for years and we’re happy to share some of their most helpful tips from the pages of Lapidary Journal Jewelry Artist with you here. A little side note. I met Tom & Kay in Tucson, 2001’ish and we dreamt up the Ask the Experts column right then and there. I’m thankful for social media and being able to keep up with all their accomplishments and family news. Kay is quite the curator of art and if you don’t already, follow her for inspiration! It is with a heavy heart I share that Tom passed away. I can still see his smile, hear his voice as he helped me understand the complexity of a project he was working on or tool he was creating, and his legacy of knowledge as a metals and intarsia expert lives on, as do his beautiful designs. —Tammy Honaman, Interweave Director of Content

Q: What’s the best platform to use to hold a piece when soldering from beneath?

A: We are often asked this question in one form or another and started asking it of ourselves many years ago when we melted our share of bezels trying to teach ourselves how to solder fine silver bezels to sterling silver back plates.

Above: Soldering stand. Photograph by Jim Lawson

We quickly learned that the flame should only be applied to the bottom of the backing plate, heating to a high enough temperature to melt the solder but not the fine silver bezel: remember, it’s the heated metal causing the solder to flow, not the flame. Simply stated, the platform is any device or object that raises the piece to be soldered above the refractory surface, allowing the flame access to bottom of the backing plate.

Titanium Trivets. Courtesy of Tim and Kay Benham — Titanium Trivets. Photo: Courtesy of Tom and Kim Benham

Titanium Platforms

Several companies have recently introduced titanium enameling trivets, which also function as excellent soldering platforms, and our current preference is for a titanium platform. The reason is that silver solder will not stick to titanium, nor will enamel. If you’ve ever soldered your clamps or fixtures to your silver, you will really appreciate this feature! We recently acquired some wide titanium strips and discovered they could be bent into V or W shapes. If you place two or more of these on the refractory surface, it provides a substantial soldering platform.

Other platforms can work, simply not as well. But because we think it’s good to understand options, we describe those we’ve tried here, with their advantages and disadvantages.

Tripod and Mesh

The first device we tried was the old standby: a soldering tripod and wire mesh. While this setup is readily available and resulted in fewer melted bezels, the heavy wire mesh was a huge heat sink, requiring the use of a larger torch tip. One of the side effects of the additional heat from the larger tips was the oxidized or fire scale pattern resulting from the heavy wire mesh touching the back plate — so we had to spend a lot of time sanding and polishing to remove the pattern. We tried several different wire mesh set ups with varying results, but generally did not like the wire mesh in contact with the silver.

Wire Nest and Coils, courtesy of Tom and Kim Benham — Wire Nest and Coils. Photo: Courtesy of Tom and Kim Benham

Binding Wire Nest

This is an old time favorite, created by loosely wrapping iron binding wire around your fingers and then manipulating the wire back and forth to form a helter-skelter pad about a half inch thick. Place the pieces to be soldered on top of the bird’s nest and direct the flame under the piece to heat Titanium trivets Titanium shapes Tripod and mesh Wire nests and coils Fire brick squares Old Saws from below. The mass of the wire is so small you don’t need a larger torch tip, but this still left some patterning on the bottom of the silver.

Toroidal coils of iron binding wire also make an excellent soldering platform, but they don’t eliminate all patterning, either so we tried stainless steel wire. That worked very well without any patterning, but because the stainless steel is much tougher than iron, you’ll need to form the coils by tightly wrapping the wire around a small wood dowel rod, then sliding the coil off and forming it into a circle to create the toroidal coil. Twist the end wires together to secure its shape.

Fire Brick Squares, courtesy of Tom and Kim Benham — Fire Brick Squares. Photo: Courtesy of Tom and Kim Benham

White Fire Brick

We have also used small blocks of white fire brick as a support, and while this mostly works well, keeping the small lightweight blocks from moving around can be vexing and at times disastrous, so we generally avoid this method.

This Q&A originally appeared in Lapidary Journal Jewelry Artist.

Do you have a favorite soldering platform? Let us know in the comments!

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