[TheForge] Candle cups

[John Husvar]

On Jan 10, 2006, at 2:39 PM, Walter Mullett wrote:

> I guess I could silver-soldier easier than braze it.
>
> I've never worked with brass so I guess I will have to play around  
> a little
> first.  I did see that Jock did a demo on i-forge a couple of years  
> ok so
> I've looked at that.

Walter,

FWIW, there are several varieties of colored solders available. IIRC,  
Rio Grande has them as do most jewelers' supply houses. I'm not sure  
any more what they cost or what temperature ranges are, but they  
might give you a better color match than lead or plain silver solder.

Google gets 339 hits for "colored solder" (with quotes) and the top  
ones look pretty good. Sorry, I don't have time to explore more, but  
that might be a start for ya.

Another trick is to flux your tube end, set it centered on the  
waxcatcher, drop several (very) small pieces of ordinary plumbers'  
solder around the _inside_ of the tube and heat from the outside or  
bottom. A small OA welding tip works well for localizing the heating.

The solder will run to the flux, even uphill by capillary action.  
After a few tries, it's not difficult to make your solder run right  
to where you want it and nowhere else. It works surprisingly well. It  
seemed a bit counterintuitive to me at first, but it does work.  
(Trick a jeweler I was teaching to blacksmith taught me. Funny how  
that works! :)

Good Luck!