I Am Looking For A Jewelry Silver ??

Q: Looking for a jewelry supplier and would like to know about silver soilder now days. When I was playing around making jewelry 25 years ago, a friend had a bracelet that kept breaking and he would get it fixed and it would break again because he would bend it to get it on. I got the usual silver soilders low, med , high and had the same luck as the last guy that had fixed it. At Sears I found a silver soilder that melted at 1100 degs. that worked great. It was flexable and strong and the bracelet never broke again. Sears does not sale that soilder anymore. Does anyone use a soilder like that ?

A:-Bending a silver bracelet over time will break most of them. This can be previnted by making the opening wide enought that you can push it over the narrow part of the wrist then rotating it around into position. You can also hinge the sides of the bracelet and put a clasp on it. The type of solder you were talking about from Sears may have been a type used to solder copper pipes for airconditioning instalations. These types of solders are not recomended for jewelery applications, the silver content is useually low and will contaminate the metal. The most important thing about silver soldering is the flux.

Borax mixed with a little water to make a paste works good and is available at the grocery store. I like to use the paste solders which have their own flux mixed in. One customer friendly place to buy solder and supplys is Rio Grande in Alberqurque. 1 800 545 6566 -Are you looking for a jewelry supplier, or jewelers supplies? And where are you located? As for your friend's bracelet, I would credit the quality of your repair work first and the solder second. Not sure about the solder from Sears. But there is a good chance it was similar to H&H's Alloy 65 (at least that's what I recall it being) in wide use for repair of Indian style jewelry back in the 60's and 70's.