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• The
Beauty of Pulse Arc Welding •
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As any silversmith knows, silver solder is the ideal material to use when joining sterling by the traditional method of brazing. Sometimes I will receive an object which has been lead-soldered in the area in need of repair (or re-repair). Sometimes the joined area is not visibly accessible, and I don't know if lead has been used. In either case, I cannot use silver solder because the high temperature required will melt any lead in the joint and allow it to form its own alloy with the silver. The lead is acting like the Ebola virus and devouring the silver. Not pretty! And, using a low temperature tin/silver solder won't give me a sound joint or good silver color. For this reason, I use the German-made Lampert PUK04 pulse arc welder – the first silversmith in North America to own this latest model. Pulse arc welding allows me to use solid sterling wire for a prefect color match (silver solders contain less fine silver than sterling). The pulse arc welding principle: Non-toxic argon gas is pumped through a handpiece and engulfs the welding area with a protective atmosphere to eliminate firestain. An electric arc (energy flow) is created from the point where the electrode touches the workpiece. As the electrode retracts, the arc is drawn up from the point of contact. Exactly here, melting occurs, and the result is a clean and stable weld.
The high degree of precision is made possible by touching the workpiece with the tip of the electrode. The electrical arc necessary for welding is thus generated from exactly this point. By varying the angle at where the electrode tip touches, welds can be accurately steered in the desired direction and previously applied metal "distorted" or modeled. The heat is so localized that I can handle the object without getting burned, even at 1,640 degrees – the melting point of sterling!
Above is a match safe that was repaired using pulse arc welding. See additional images and the entire process here.
This Kiddush cup was made from very thin material. I reshaped the torn area which extended 3/4 of the way around the stem. I then brought together both sides of the split and welded them together. All voids were filled by welding with sterling wire for a perfect color match. I straightened the stem and leveled the bottom and top rims. I then removed the dried polish and performed a very light hand polishing.
Sometimes engraving must be filled in if the material is too thin to eradicate. So was the case with this knife handle.
The monogram disappeared after being filled with the same alloy the object was made of.
This 5½" Wallace sterling cut glass jar cover was stamped and spun out of extremly thin material. The image on the left shows light coming through three areas of a flower as well as other areas on the piece. These areas were worn through from over polishing. The edges of the open spaces were the approximate thickness of a piece of tin foil (.001"). The PUK worked beautifully, and I used .25mm sterling wire for a perfect color match.
This plate came to me with chased lettering that the customer wanted removed and the overall look brought back to its original beauty. I couldn't planish out the lettering because the metal would dramatically deform and loose thickness. I couldn't fill it in with silver solder because of all the pin holes and color difference that would result. And electroforming wouldn't do. This job required the use of my PUK and was going to very complex. The lower parts of the lettering were very thin as it was chased on a steel form, and the slightly rounded corners would be more difficult to level with the overall disk. Additional images can be found here.
Someone had the clever idea to engrave these 1730 caster bodies with "salt" and "pepper." (The tops were left off to show a larger area of the engraving.) Engraving the function of these pieces is certainly not something I would have done, but to each his own. Since the engraving was too thin to remove by filing, I used sterling wire and the PUK to fill it in. When I photographed the "after" image I had not yet polished the bottom sections of the casters (and the change in the tarnish color is due to the casters handling while welding). The total time it took to fill in the engraving, repatinate, and hand finish the casters was three hours. Larger images can be found here.
This rare Jensen piece shows chased lettering that I filled in with sterling (left). The image on the right shows the finished job. A few pin pricks were left to blend with the rest of the surface. If this hadn't been done, the filled surface would have looked too refined.
This ring's amber was glued onto the setting with decorative wires above, only 1/16" from the stone. As you can see in the image on the left, the wires had come apart. Since I couldn't remove the stone, I had to weld the wires back together with the stone in place. Here's the process I used: I pried open the wires and removed the silver solder. The wires were then sprung back together. I slid index card stock between the wires and the amber to prevent the stone from burning during welding. The wires were then welded together with sterling filler wire.
Discover the more trechnical side of pulse arc welding here.
Welding with pulse arc technology. |
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Israeli
Sterling Kiddush Cup
