Western Buckle Fabrication

[cowboy_silversmith]

Chris, I appreciate the compliment very much. Life is short - If I can help advance other people's knowledge in our craft, I am happy to do so. I am also looking to learn from others as well. There are so many awesomely talented people associated with this forum!

Ken, Yes I do use boric acid to prevent firescale. I try to avoid a thick mixture of boric and alcohol. The reason being is this. When you apply heat to the piece with the boric and the boric is "baked" (my term)
to the top of the piece, the boric has a tendency to seperate and leave an uneven coating. If I am soldering numerous overlay components simultaneously and I know the entire buckle is going to be heated for an prolonged and extended period of time, I might want to bake in a second coat of boric. If I am soldering silver on silver I don't even use boric, I coat everything with flux. Twisted wire rope. After I have twisted the wire and cut it to lenght, I then anneal and pickle it. I sand and file each end. I butt the two ends together in such a fashion as to give an appearance of an uninterupted and continuous rope strand. I solder the joint with just enough silver solder to fill the seam. If you use to much silver solder this area becomes rigid and does not take a shape very well. Pickle again. Anneal again being mindful of the solder joint. Pickle again. Then I try to get the rope in it's current state to lay as flat as it can on a any flat surface. I then lighlty sand the back side of it so that it rest more flat on your base material and the solder is accepted more readily to both pieces. I then shape the rope on a shaping mandrel. If it does not take the shape fully I will anneal one last time. I then lay the rope border on my base material. This is the only time I use any type of clamping device when soldering. I use cross locking tweezers to keep the integrity of the rope shape in place, otherwise the heat would distort the shape of the rope before it could be entirely soldered to the base. Well that's how I do it, seems to work.

Best regards,
Greg Pauline

 

[cowboy_silversmith]

Ken, One thing I neglected to add. Once the rope border is in place, I bring it up to temperature. I use silver solder wire (22 gauge i believe) and while keeping it at temperature I feed the silver solder wire into the rope at the point where the rope and base meet. Keeping the entire piece warm and keeping the area just ahead of where I want the solder to flow a bit hotter, I rotate the base until the entire rope is soldered to the base in this fashion. Pickle and your done with this process. Hope this helps?

Best regards,
Greg Pauline

 

[webad2006]

Greg,

Thanks again, your a bundle of info for someone just starting out such as myself. Will be looking forward to your next post.

Bill.

 

[webad2006]

Greg,

Up to this point I have tried many of your tips, and they all seem to work fine for me with soft solder. However I recently decided to try a harder solder (20ga braze-560, with handy flux paste) from IJS, and seem to be having problems getting it to flow/stick to the parts. I'm using oxy/propane on a 1/4" steel base, with 26ga german silver overlays. Any helpfull hints, or words of wisdom would be greatly appreciated.

 

[cavemans workshop]

On the hard soldering or brazing, make sure everything is clean, and it all fits up good. Using hard solder on steel, the steel must be clean, I drop it in muratic acid to get the mill scale off of it. I then coat the steel piece in white handy flux, and start to heat it. I watch the flux closely as well. The flux will appear kind of crusty looking when first heated, them it will turn to a sticky more clear liquid. When it get close to proper temp, the flux will be clear and will run and flow without being as sticky. Your metal should also be a dull red color about now. You should be able to flow the solder into the joint. Remember the solder follows heat and you can draw it to where it needs to flow with heat and a pick. I dont tin anything, I will use a piece of solder wire held in a pin vice and touch it to the joint, and it will flow under my overlay. I have never had much luck tinning the back of my overlays. I also have some home made holders that I use to keep things in place.
I also use an acetylene and air torch, it gets plenty hot, with out getting too hot. I am able to do all of my brazing with this. I can post some pictures of the hold down tools I made if you want to see them. Nothing fancy, but they work for me.

 

[webad2006]

Mike,

Thanks for your input. I've been trying to tin the parts first using alot of flux, but only enough solder to cover them. Maybe that's part of the problem?

I'd like to see your holding devices, right now I just hold things in place with surgical forcepts, or a ground down flat screwdriver.

If there is excess solder around the findings, how will I be able to clean it off?

 

[cavemans workshop]

I will get some pictures of my hold down tools. I will also try to get some pictures put together of a soldering tutorial. I dont have any problem with excess solder around the mountings, especially using the hard solder. If your at the right temp, the solder will flow right under the mounting with no problem. Sometimes with the soft solder, there may be a little at the edge of the mounting. This is why you will see a wiggle line cut around mountings, it is one way to clean up a little excess, and make a little more decoration, or engraving to the piece. Take a close look at lots of the hand made items out there, especially in the TX style, and you will see the wiggle cut around these mountings. I dont cut this wiggle around most of my mountings. If I am making steel buckles, I will solder down all of my silver, and clean up any excess with a soft cut wire wheel. That will remove any excess, and then I go throught the polishing steps. I hope this helps, like I said I will try to put together some pictures.
Mike

 

[cowboy_silversmith]

Bill~ I am not well versed in steel fabrication. I am paying attetion to what Mike has to say as well as some others who post. I am hoping to attempt my first set of spurs in the very near future.

Best regards,
Greg Pauline

 

[robertosilver]

Hi, I have been making this Custom Trophy buckles for 30 years and I can tell you that most of the process is done by hand, first you prepare your base in gauge 16 then after you hand saw all the lettering and scroll work you need to solder all these parts to your future buckle.
Then go to the polishing room after the polishing you need to engrave and after that go back to polishing to do the buffing.
There is also production buckles for that you need to a die.
Also you can make them casted but first you need to make one model which is like making a custom buckle again.
Hope that helps.
Roberto Silver

 

[robertosilver]

Bill, I can see that you are trying to solder to a heavy steel base, make sure that your torch heats the steel base very hot in order to do that you might need to re-apply flux protector more than once. Once you have your 1/4" steel base hot enough clean the surface slightly in preparation to apply your german silver overlays this time make sure you use silver solder with a minimum of 30 % silver.
Let me know if you have more questions about soldering on steel bases or spurs.
robertosilver

 

[diandwill]

When I am doing connected overlays, where positioning is important, I saw the piece out, leaving the tabs, then use a seperating disc, on the back side, and relieve the clearance. This way the solder doesn't flow under the tabs, and they are easy to remove and, with a little care, will not mar the background.

 

[doug]

Boy Im glad this subject was brought up Ive been trying to shape buckles and solder on borders for a month or so now and its been a disaster so far.Gonna keep trying.
Doug