Annealing

[Bluesssman]

Bob, it happened when you were abducted by aliens the third time if I am not mistaken! ;D ;D ;D


Gary

[Jeweller]

Hi All,

Thought I'd throw in my 2cents worth here too  :)

Firstly, I can't believe the stories I'm reading of classes with arguing tutors, unfinished pieces etc....  I wish you all were here in Aus and could come to MY classes....we'd have a ball !!!

Anyway, back to the topic.

Cherry red is definately too hot for annealing silver....18ct gold yes, silver no...

When you heat polished silver it will go through stages of colour. First it will kind of go dull, then a kind of chalky whitish colour, then a soft dull pink, then dark (cherry) pink/red, then very shiny, then too late it's melted.. Annealing point is at the soft dull pink colour and it needs to be held steadily at that colour (by 'waving' the torch) for a few seconds. If you are doing wire, the flame is best run along the length, ie: parallel to the wire to anneal as much of the wire at a time as possible thus avoiding missed spots. Longer lengths can be coiled, but be careful to secure the ends as sometimes when the metal relaxes, the coil can spring open.

The process is completed by quenching. Water or pickle doesn't matter, it's the cooling that makes a difference, not the liquid. In my classes, I have the students quench in water because that's what is on the soldering bench....often handy if there's a fire from a stray torch flame. On my own bench, I always quench in pickle because that's what's there and it saves time. I breathe in before I quench, and blow away the fumes with the out breath....second nature now after all these years (I even find myself doing that with water!)

The silver shouldn't be red when it's quenched, but the pink goes away pretty much as soon as you remove the flame anyway, so don't stress about that part. Pretty much, so long as there is 'hiss' when it goes in the quenching liquid, you're OK.

There is no need to anneal a finished piece, the idea is to soften the metal making it easier to work with.

Hope this helps....  ;)

[Steve]

In regards to the argentium silver.....When I first started using this I was informed by one of my jewelry outlet attendees that argentiun silver has ferric properties and should be cooled slowly to room temperature for proper annealing.  I know this works because this is the method I've use when making Mokume Gane.  It softens the argentium silver & copper layers for the next series of rolling.  From experience, when it not annealed in this manner the rolling process has caused the silver and copper to separate, and that's a bummer..................

[Steve]

While wondering around the net I Goggled "annealing silver" and ran across this page on silver I found to be both interesting and informative.

http://www.handyharmancanada.com/hbpm/silver/silver.htm

[Taogem]

Neat link Steve..

Lots of detailed info..