Fusing Argentium Silver 

tammygurl64 Sorry for the delay in getting back to you, I’m rarely on the channel much anymore. I use citric acid to clean the ring after soldering. I buy it from soap making suppliers, cheaper than buying it from a jewellery supplier. You can also use pickle juice from a jar of pickles, vinegar. Get a mini crock pot and heat it up.

You can use sparex(pickle) or just Vinager and salt..2cup's vinager and 1 teaspoon salt heated work's well...

Yes. I have cast scrap into rods and ingots. A couple sand castings as well as lost wax casting.

.925 Sterling cannot be fused.

@Growavy Sorry for the delay in responding, I haven’t been active on this channel for quite some time. As Gerard Hennelly mentioned, sterling silver cannot be fused because of the higher copper content or the lack of Germanium.

@wabi sabi. When fusing, you’ll want to heat the whole piece to an orange glow, then quickly focus on the seam. Practice with jump rings made with round wire, rectangle wire will be difficult.

thanks will try practising with round wire . made a ring with square wire and noticed that it fused but looks rounded around the join area might’ve gotten slightly too hot , appreciate your answer thanks

wabi sabi So you need to consider the physics in this. Square or rectangular wire has edges. These edges are thin and because they are thin, they are not going to heat up evenly and are going to be the first things to melt because they are thinner. Round wire doesn’t have thin edges. When fusing, you need to keep that principal in mind. Heat the larger mass area first, avoid the thin areas and then quickly and briefly hit the seam with the torch to complete the fuse. I highly recommend doing jump rings to practice fusing. I made 6 18” loop in loop chains (hundreds of jump rings) and you get pretty good at it, because if you over heat it, the jump rings ball up and tell you “TOO HOT!!!” Lol.

yes i totally do get it as i’ve got lots of wee argentium balls now.. i would love to do an exercise like that but as a beginner i don’t have a large amount of wire to practise on yet. will have to get some to do those exercises. I’m too impatient .Early on i had some amazing beginners luck and fused some square profile rings successfully . Back to the drawing board . Thanks for your comments:-)

wabi sabi Those little Argentium balls will come in handy when you want to fuse some embellishments on to a piece or do granulation. It’s all a process and it sounds like you’re on your way. Argentium definitely is a metal like no other and I think people that have worked with traditional Sterling Silver historically find the transition the most challenging, as you have to unlearn a few key things. As a brand new self taught metalsmith, I started off with Argentium because #1, it was shinier than Sterling and I’m a bit of a magpie. I’ve had my fair share of Argentium mishaps, mostly of the “crumbling” nature, trying to pick it up or move it while its still too hot, or trying to remove a soldered jump ring from a piece and heating the jumping ring instead of the main piece,....bring out the grinder and files. I think in a lot of ways Argentium really is beginner friendly, because it does have properties that work in a beginner’s favor. Like not having to have a completely tight fit between two surfaces. It’s not THE ideal, but it works and so I exploit those properties because sometimes trying to get two surfaces to fit perfectly, like a convex or concave surface can be a hair pulling nightmare, Argentium will just “mould” itself to the surface. Good luck and stick with it, you’re getting there!

22 gauge copper, thanks for the nice comments!

@@SonneCreations yes I always use tensioned binding wire around my charcoal blocks ..I’m going to make a case now …great idea Thankyou ❤