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How long to hold annealing temperatures? Kiln annealing and precipitation hardening.
Question
I just watched your video – https://www.youtube.com/
Answer
I’ve been reading this, highly technical and often, over-my-head book: Introduction to Precious Metals: Metallurgy for Jewelers and Silversmiths by Mark Grimwade. Ideally, for maximum softness (56 – 66 HV), sterling silver should be kiln annealed, at 730°C (1346° F) for 30 minutes and then immediately quenched. But, you can also anneal with a torch. For torch annealing, a minute or two or three(!) is fine. The danger in holding it for 5 minutes is that you can over-anneal causing the formation of unwanted beta-crystals. As the temperature is hotter with the torch, the time must then be shorter.
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- The Heat is On: About Heat Treating Metals by Gary Dawson, Ganoksin.
- How to Set Up a Torch – have a torch, need to set it up? Here’s how.
- Soldering 101, part one and Soldering 101, part two
- All About Solder – You need to understand what you are working with!
- Flat Square Edges on Metal – Important techniques for creating square edges like on ring shanks, tubing, settings, etc. – pretty much any two pieces that you want to solder together!
- Getting Ready to Solder – Important steps before you solder.
- Identify Wire Solder – Mark your solder before confusion reigns!
- Jewelry Studio Safety – Extremely important information that every jeweler should know! Don’t risk your life or your health! Know the dangers of metal dust? If not, don’t sand anything – yet!
- Creating Consistently Sized Spheres – how do you make perfectly round spheres? You might need to know!
- How to Anneal Silver Sheet – an important skill to have otherwise, you can damage your metal and work twice as hard!
- Annealing Wire – Want broken wire? How about melted wire? Need your wire soft and bendable? These tips will help you to avoid these problems and work with ease!
- DIY Fume Extractor for the Studio or Shop – One of the BIG ONES for studio safety. Learn to make your own!
- How to Make a Bezel and Set a Cabochon Part One – Want to solder thin material to thick? Want to set a stone or two? Learn how to create and solder bezels.
- How to Make a Bezel and Set a Cabochon Part Two – Ditto from above.
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Soldering Jewelry: How to solder settings, bails and wire. – We solder dissimilar shapes and sizes of metal together, all the time. Want to stop melting your settings or bails? Can you solder wire without melting it?
- Soldering Jewelry – Sweat, Flush, or Applique Soldering – How to solder two pieces of metal on top of each other. Learn tricks for successful joining of dissimilar sizes and how to apply solder.
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My YouTube Soldering Playlist – A list of all my soldering videos on YouTube.
Related Web Pages
- About Solder – Learn all about the material you use.
- Acetylene, Torch, Tanks, Safety – A huge page with so much more than info on Acetylene! Learn all about torches, soldering and how to protect yourself!
- Charts – Soldering related charts. Includes things like: annealing temps, compressed gas valve sizes, what temperature does your gas burn at, what are the melting points of your metal. Also, there are wire gauge charts, millimeter to fractions and inches charts, drill bits to wire gauge charts. Lots of information!
- Cleaning Metal – nice to know if you plan on soldering anything!
- On Pickle, Acid, Crock Pots and Baking Soda – How to remove the schmutz left from soldering, how to make your own pickle, how to use pickle and how to neutralize pickle. Tons of info!
- Oxidation, Flux and Fire scale – Why does oxidation occur? Why do you keep getting fire scale, how do you get rid of it. Learn the whys of what is happening when you solder and the solutions.
- The 4 Steps for Successful Soldering – The 4 steps will help you to achieve soldering success!
- Identifying Wire Solder – How to mark your solder so that you always know what type it is.
- Jewelry Tools – Harbor Freight – Cheap tools for the studio!
- Miter Cutting Vise and Jig: Having a hard time squaring up the ends of your ring shanks? Check out this tool!
- Q&A: Firescale/Firestain – See what others have had problems with and find the solutions!
- Q&A: Annealing – How long to hold your annealing temps. Kiln annealing.
- Q&A: Wire Questions. Balling up wire, tapering wire, work hardening wire, straightening wire and more!
- Recipes: They aren’t just for cookin’ anymore!
- Pickle Recipe – make your own pickle
- Prip’s Flux Recipe – make your own flux
- Removing Broken Drill Bits From Your Metal -snapped your drill bit and can’t get it out? Here’s how to remove broken drill bits.
- Removing Copper Flashing i.e.: How to remove the copper coating you might get from pickling. Also, how to remove copper from brass or bronze that comes to the metal’s surface after soldering.
- Wire and Sheet Metal
- What Torch to Buy: Trying to figure out what you need to make fire in your studio? Check out this information before you buy!
- Torch/Gas Questions – Portable vs. regular torches, problems with torch, butane torches, water torches, setting up a torch safely, buying torches.
- Soldering in a Nutshell – my list of basic necessities for soldering.
- Soldering Questions – One of the most asked after subject matter. Many of my web pages have been inspired by soldering issues and questions.