Filling mosaic pins with silver???

[metal99]

So here I am making a knife for a friend of mine and had a great idea! I would use some of the silver that was his mothers in his knife! So I made some spacers out of silver to go between the damascus bolsters and ADI scales. I thought for sure that would be enough silver but . . . . The instant I showed him the mosaic pins I am making for his knife he said "Do you think it would be to much to ask you to fill them with silver?"

I think its a great idea! But can it be done? I just have this feeling that getting molton silver to pour into the tiny voids it going to be very hard to do. I'm not sure if the melting point of brass is high enough to do this either I might actually have to "alloy" the silver with some silver bearing solder just to lower the melting point a bit, wich I think would be ok because it would still have some of his mothers silver in it.

Another thing I was thinking of doing if I cant get the pins full of pure silver is making some silver "dust" and putting it in some alumilite or clear epoxy to fill the pins. . . I dont know . . .

[Doug Lester]

I doubt that you can get it to flow in that narrow of a channel. You idea about mixing it as a dust with some epoxy might work.

Doug

[AUBE]

I would try to mix some with solder and try it that way.

Years ago I did the same thing but with pure solder. To get it in the tube I melted the solder in a crucible, heated the mosaic pin up (so the solder wouldn't cool too fast), then drew a vacuum on the top of the pin with the bottom in the molten silver. It filled the pin with no voids.

[metal99]

Originally Posted by AUBE

I would try to mix some with solder and try it that way.

Years ago I did the same thing but with pure solder. To get it in the tube I melted the solder in a crucible, heated the mosaic pin up (so the solder wouldn't cool too fast), then drew a vacuum on the top of the pin with the bottom in the molten silver. It filled the pin with no voids.

Ahh so you kinda did the same thing you do when your lost wax casting. I used to dabble in that about 10 years ago. What did you do to prevent the solder from comming out the side you drew vacuum on? Did the adhesion seem good?

Another thing I could do is just fill the centre tube with the silver, I'm sure that would be a lot easyer to do then filling all those little voids. Right in the centre I have a hexagon that I am having a hard time finding the right size wires to hold in the centre so maybe I can just elimate the hex. Might look kinda cool with a solid silver pin inside of a simple mosaic.

[AUBE]

Originally Posted by metal99

Ahh so you kinda did the same thing you do when your lost wax casting. I used to dabble in that about 10 years ago. What did you do to prevent the solder from comming out the side you drew vacuum on? Did the adhesion seem good?

Adhesion seemed fine to me (I degreased everything and rubbed the outside surfaces down with a Scotchbrite).

As for preventing the solder from coming out the top...I did nothing . I only did this on a couple of pins (4 if memory serves) and I had some sort of high temp plastic tubing that this local factory had in their scrap pile. The solder did overflow because I pulled the vacuum way too fast, and it got into the plastic line but I was able to set the pin on a piece of wood in the upright position before the line melted through and lost vacuum. a small amount of solder did flow out the bottom and the top 1/2" or so of the 6" segment wasn't able to be used from having solder on the outside of the pins and some voids at the very top from solder trying to leak out the bottom when vacuum was lost.

My method could definitely be improved upon. I didn't really think it through when I did it. I was doing epoxy mosaic pins (which I also use a vacuum on) and the thought of using solder popped into my head. So of course I had to try it right that very moment. If I were to do it again I would use a much slower vacuum draw (that was my main problem), and use longer tubing than I intended to fill. If I planned on filling 6" tubing I'd use a 9" outside tube to give me leeway for overflowing solder. You could also measure the volume of solder needed to fill the tube so you have a better idea of when it was going to overflow.

[jdale]

I might have to give this a try, I need to figure what to do with the 1.5 lbs of sta-bright silver solder I just bought from a thrift store for $12.

[metal99]

12 bucks??? Man thats a good deal!!!