anyone use silver solder?
 

and how in gods name do u get the heat up high enough for it?

I have used oxygen/acetylene and oxygen/natural gas (in a lab environment setup).

Re: anyone use silver solder?
 

If you're referring to the silver "solder" that I think you are, then you are actually talking about brazing. Brazing occurs at temperatures over 800 F. Soldering occurs at temperatures less than 800 F.

Silver brazing occurs in the 1100 F temperature range. Brass brazing occurs around 1700 F. I think silver brazing became known as silver soldering as a tribute to its low temperature as opposed to brass brazing.

Brazing is a difficult procedure and generally requires a torch with a separate oxygen tank. Those little two-tank BernzOmatic setups are good enough to braze small joints.

The difficulty in brazing actually comes from the setup. Brazing requires proper clearances between parts, as the molten filler is distributed by capillary action. When the parts don't mate properly you can get voids inside the joint. You have to be able to hold parts in place, and you have to understand the expansion rates of parts if you're joining dissimilar metals. When you braze there is also some alloying occuring between the parts and the filler. This doesn't occur in soldering.

When you silver braze you have to be very careful about your silver selection. You don't want any silver with cadmium as it is toxic when released during brazing. The cadmium stuff flows really nice and makes the best joint, but there are also cadmium free versions that flow well.

I think soldering is just fine for what we're doing.

yeah, I use silver solder, I use my stove to heat up my blocks and solder

first you flux up the block, then stick it all together, line it up, set it on the stove, and turn it on high.

the block will start turning color before the solder will melt, when you touch the solder to the block, make sure you dont touch it to the top, itll move. as soon as the solder will melt good, turn off the burner if its a slow heating and cooling burner, otherwize let it all solder, then turn it off and let it cool for a few hrs.



Jon

The types of silver solder i've seen contains quite a small part of silver (under 10%) and I'm really curious about the heat transfer of this sweet material..

If anyone knows anything about this, it would be very helpful to know since it could be a lot easier to make certain types of blocks if it's good.