How to solder a gold chain at home?

What defects can you fix yourself at home?

Small cracks on the inside of the product. The location of the chip is especially important for wide chains, on which poor-quality seams after soldering are clearly visible.
Break of one link in a multi-level weave. The chain did not break completely. One edge of the link has bent, which needs to be bent (soldered) so that it does not cling.
The ring on the lock was bent and torn. You can solder it yourself, since it is located at the back of the decoration. And even if your gold seam is not the most beautiful, it will not be visible.

Complete breaks, defects on the outer side of the weaving, loss of several links - all these situations are best left to the shoulders of the master. A jeweler can not only solder a gold chain, but also add a little metal to recreate the original appearance of the threads.

What instruments and devices will be needed for home soldering?

To understand how to solder a gold chain at home, you need to carefully examine the place of the chip or break. And also prepare all the necessary tools and equipment for work:

a small gas burner with a thin torch - needed to heat the alloy;
special gold solder, which is needed for correct soldering;
homemade or purchased flux;
small pliers and tweezers for gripping the product;
a set of needle files of various shapes;
a drill and a small vice for fixing the chain.

The soldering process is no different from working with other metals. The only peculiarity is the miniaturization of the product parts that need to be soldered to each other.

Important! If you have not worked with a blowtorch or soldered other metals before, you should not practice on gold jewelry. You can completely ruin the product. And then even the master will not be able to restore it.

Useful tips

If your jewelry breaks, you will definitely benefit from the following tips:

The parts of the broken product should be placed in a bag. It should be clean and close well.
Find out information about the location of the jewelry workshop.
The cost of repairing gold jewelry depends on the complexity of the damage. Therefore, the price of repairs must be agreed upon in advance with the repairman.
If you want to carry out repairs yourself, you should consult with specialists. You can also purchase the necessary parts and tools in the workshop. The technician can clearly show you the entire soldering process.
If the fastener is faulty, it must be replaced. It can be purchased separately and made from any type of metal, the main thing is that it matches the color of the decoration. Installing the clasp yourself is not difficult.

It is very unpleasant when your favorite jewelry breaks. The cost of repairing a product is not always affordable. Carrying out repairs at home is much cheaper. However, you should not do this without soldering experience. Jewelry repair requires maximum precision and care.

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Stages of soldering a gold chain at home

Solder preparation. If you don’t have special solder for gold, you can create it from scrap materials at home. To do this, you need to prepare a crucible for melting metals, a small amount of gold, silver and copper. As well as pharmacy scales and a mold for melting solder. The recipe itself is as follows: for 585 parts of gold, take 115 parts of silver and 185 parts of copper.
Preparing the chain for soldering. It is necessary to secure the product in a vice or other clamp so that the damaged area is visible. The product must take its original shape. That is, the thread must be straight.
Preparation for soldering. It is necessary to boil the solder and gold jewelry. Under the influence of high temperatures, gold will be covered with a special protective layer.
Adjusting the flame and soldering itself. Before starting to create a seam, it is worth adjusting the burning intensity. Then heat the gold evenly at the joint. When the chain reaches the desired temperature at the break point, take solder and make a neat seam.
Grinding and processing of the seam. If, after “gluing” the links, a large seam has formed that protrudes above the surface of the chain, it must be sanded. And then treat it with a special napkin to give the product shine.

Important! You not only need to understand how to solder a gold chain at home, but also be able to handle soldering equipment. And also for miniature products with small links, there is another, more subtle soldering technology.

Electroplated gold

Of course, gold jewelry has a very high price. In order to put cheaper analogues on sale, gilding of base metals was invented.

Costume jewelry is inexpensive jewelry. They are usually made of bronze, copper, brass and an alloy in varying proportions of zinc, tin, and iron.

Metals and their alloys in the final product will differ in strength and color. Recently, to reduce the cost of the technological process, jewelry has even been made from plastic.

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The result is a nice little thing that will easily lose the color of the coating under the influence of air and humidity, oxidize, or even break completely.

In order for jewelry to be used for a long time without losing its decorative properties, it is sprayed, most often from precious metals - gold and silver.

Forming a precious surface on a base metal can be done mechanically and galvanically.

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With the mechanical method, gold is applied in the thinnest plates using glue or other fixatives.

The result of this titanic work is gold leaf, which is usually used for church domes.

A gold layer can be electroplated using an electric current.

The part is placed in an electrolyte solution between two gold plates, the plates are connected to a positive current source, and the electrically conductive wire on which the decoration is suspended is connected to a negative one.

The current removes tiny particles of gold from the plates and deposits them on a negatively charged particle.

Electroplating can apply a layer of different thicknesses, it all depends on the processing time. The minimum time for the required thickness of the deposited layer is 30-40 minutes.

The result is that our cute decoration has become gold and, of course, more wear-resistant.

The attitude towards galvanically made gold is twofold - some consider such jewelry to be cheap, but for others it is a completely justified way to produce jewelry.

You can electroplate gold at home. A similar experiment, however, not with the use of gold due to its high cost, but with nickel or copper, is demonstrated in chemistry lessons in high school.

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As we have discussed, technologically soldering gold surfaces is not difficult.

Mastering gold soldering is quite difficult only because the cost of solders and consumables is very high, and besides, you are unlikely to deliberately damage the jewelry in order to practice soldering on it.

For those who want to learn how to solder gold surfaces, we can recommend mastering the soldering of small copper parts (radio components or wiring) and, having acquired solid skills in the soldering process itself, take on the repair of gold jewelry.

Cost and features of repairing gold chains in workshops

For those who have never worked with soldering equipment and do not know how to solder a gold chain at home, the easiest way out of a difficult situation with a breakdown is to contact a jewelry workshop.

The cost of repairing jewelry in a workshop depends on various factors:

complexity and scale of the breakdown - one link in the chain or several;
features of chain weaving - for example, a large anchor chain is faster and easier to solder than elegant women's weaving;
urgency of work - you will always have to pay extra for speed;
the need to add gold - the cost of 1 g of gold is about 1500 rubles. by the end of 2021.

The jeweler will tell you the exact price of the work when you bring your gold chain to the workshop for repair.

The recovery process itself includes several stages:

Preparing jewelry for soldering. It is fixed on a stationary machine in the workshop. Clean the edges of the break so that no dust or dirt remains in the microcracks. Select the required solder composition.
Soldering. Various tools are used depending on the type and degree of damage. Often special laser equipment is used, after working with which there are no visible seams on the chain.
Seam cleaning and processing. The gold jewelry is returned to the client in perfect condition. To achieve shine, the seam is cleaned. Then the entire decoration is treated with a protective solution. It is this that increases the strength, reduces the abrasion rate of gold and gives the product shine.

Jewelers are much quicker at understanding how to solder a particular gold chain. After all, the craftsmen themselves are capable of making it from scratch. They take into account the features and direction of weaving. Specialists are even ready to apply engraving over the seam so that none of your friends and family will ever guess that the chain has been repaired.

How to do soldering?

The information that, starting from the early Middle Ages and the emergence of the first production workshops, people used soldering to join (alloy) two parts of the same precious metal, came to us with preserved jewelry, on which a rough seam is clearly visible.

Gold jewelry of the Middle Ages was massive and, therefore, some unevenness of the seam was not noticeable.

As before, there and now the connection of two metal surfaces is carried out using a third, which melts at a much lower temperature.

By heating all three surfaces (using a torch or laser), the low-melting surface melts and spreads over the parts to be joined.

Once solidified, the soldering forms a hard bonding layer of alloy, which is then ground to make it invisible.

The low-melting alloy surface that creates the bonding layer is called solder and is usually produced in the form of rods.

Each metal requires its own solder and even several.

When the edges of the surfaces to be soldered heat up, an oxidizing strand appears on them - an oxide that interferes with the strong adhesion of the welded layer to the base.

Moreover, it not only worsens the connection, but can lead to an instant break after cooling.

To prevent this, flux is used - a substance that, when heated, neutralizes the acidic film.

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The flux is not only selected for each metal or alloy, but also depending on the further use of the item, the load on the solder joint, solder and a number of other parts, the flux must be different.

If solder for melting gold can be purchased or made independently (for example, from silver, copper, brass and 880-grade dental crowns), then you only need to buy flux.

The solders, which were used back in Kievan Rus, contained mercury or cadmium.

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Nowadays it is extremely rare to find such solders and, probably, it would be redundant to say that they are very toxic and it is better not to use them.

According to the method of creating the connecting layer, laser soldering of the alloy and soldering, which uses a gas burner at home, stand out.

How the burner works:

We prepare or purchase solder depending on the gold standard;
Apply flux and wait until the flux spreads along the edge of the surface. Choose only the appropriate flux. Distribute the flux beyond the soldering area. This is done so that the prepared area is slightly larger than the soldering itself - it may have to be expanded during the soldering process;
It will take feka. It is a bent tube with a hole at the end through which the burner supplies a thin stream of gas flame. Compressed air is supplied through the inner surface of the faucet;
We join the two broken parts, heat them with a blowpipe, add solder until it stops shining, and leave it to cool, after which we clean it with a file.

Gas soldering helps restore gold; if soldering is done carefully, the seam will not be visible. Soldering, which uses a torch, can be done independently.

There are also professional methods for repairing gold that are used in jewelry workshops, for example, laser soldering.

It will allow you to repair a torn piece of jewelry completely unnoticed, regardless of the complexity and location of the break, gold standard and other conditions.

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Laser soldering is performed using a laser beam directed by special equipment.

It is quite expensive and there is no need to purchase it for one-time soldering of gold.

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Laser soldering has a number of advantages over gas soldering:

Spot heating of the surface;
No need to use flux;
Inability to overheat the place where parts are soldered. Overheating is often a critical error when soldering gold. As a result, the adhesive seam will change color and it will not be possible to restore the original color using chemical methods. If this happens, then the entire product must be coated with an additional layer of gold using the electrochemical method;
Soldering is possible for areas of several hundredths of a millimeter;
There is no mechanical damage to surfaces, the laser acts accurately, precisely and without contact with the surface;
The method allows you to prevent foreign particles from entering the soldering area.

Laser soldering is performed without changing tools; all necessary settings are adjusted on the control device.

It is imperative to use it when the decoration has a complex design, a complex break, or when it is not possible to do gas soldering yourself.