Occasionally touch the silver solder to the juncture of the fitting and the pipe.
Silver soldering copper sheet.
Place your silver sheet to one side and apply a small amount of flux to the top side of your copper sheet.
This gives the steel a surface to bind to.
Here s a great trick for making perfectly invisible seams and hiding the solder when soldering copper with silver solder.
Silver soldering is the process of permanently joining two pieces of metal together using heat to melt pieces of silver solder which melt to fill a prepared joint.
It is used essentially with silver for jewellery making and silversmithing but can also be used to join together copper gilding metal brass and gold if needs be.
Silver soldering also known as hard soldering or silver brazing also has a higher melting point then lead so it is important to heat up the copper brass sufficiently to get the solder to melt into the joint.
Heat up the metal with your soldering iron or torch until it s hot enough to melt solder.
Insert the pipe into the fitting.
The melting point of copper cu alloy uns c12200 is 1 981 f 1082 c.
Make sure the area that is covered is roughly the same as the size of your silver sheet.
Originally published in lapidary.
Continue heating the joint for a few seconds.
Melt some solder onto the non steel metal if you re using one.
Copper tubing typically comes in 3 4 inch and 1 2 inch diameters.
The tubes are cut with a tubing cutter and the joints are connected by soldering them together with silver solder.
If it begins to melt continue applying solder around the entire joint.
More on this later.
Even though copper and brass solders wire and paste do exist they re not always on hand.
The basic difference between soldering and brazing is the temperature necessary to melt the filler metal.
If you re binding a different metal to the steel like copper or tin pre treat the surface by melting some solder onto it.
These are available with either 2 or 5 silver and are used primarily for joining copper to copper where if the metal is clean no flux need be used.
As such the filler metals for soldering and brazing copper and copper alloy tube and fittings must have melting temperatures below this temperature.
Silver solder can be used to join most common metals including mild steel stainless steel copper brass cast iron and dissimilar metals.