Point Soldering-Invented by the Devil?

by jeanettecaines on May 2, 2015

rubelliteearrings2FinalSILOAn outsiders description of using a point soldering tool could easily be:

Set up your carefully fitted parts in perfect alignment, poke them with a glob of solder stuck to the point soldering tool, WHILE heating it with a torch and melt the solder off the stick exactly into the seam without moving any of your parts out of alignment. Repeat with each piece of solder.

If that doesn’t sound like a recipe for madness, I don’t know what does. If you have already invested the considerable time in making point soldering work for you, fine. If you haven’t, save yourself a lot of time and aggravation and use stone tweezers instead.

Stone tweezers are much better than a solder pick for grabbing, placing and moving little bits of solder. There is no learning curve to speak of and multiple pieces of solder can be arranged before soldering. They are pointy enough to pick up small pieces of solder, and their texture, which is meant to grip small stones, also turns out to be perfect for holding tiny solder balls. In addition, they hold up well when subjected to heat. Use your tweezers to put your solder where you want it before you turn on your torch, and to gently nudge it back into position if it moves in the flux while heating.

More about this and lots of other ways to make your soldering easier, faster and more successful are detailed in my new book,

Soldering Demystified

Read the first two chapters for FREE

jeanettecaines

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{ 6 comments… read them below or add one }

jeanettecaines November 15, 2015 at 10:12 pm

Thanks, Rachel!

Rachel November 15, 2015 at 8:35 pm

This is a great book. Lots of practical tips. And, it is very easy to follow.

jeanettecaines May 3, 2015 at 10:54 pm

Hi Loraine
Yes, I’m using pick and point soldering interchangeably. My opinion is that pick soldering offers no advantages over using a pair of tweezers. I use tweezers in all of my soldering and teach my students to do so also. There is no soldering scenario that we cannot accomplish with our tweezers (or never yet in 25 years) and the work we do can be quite advanced. Feel free to take a look at my school’s website http://www.jewelarts.com and judge for yourself. My view is that point soldering keeps being taught as the best method when there are faster and easier ways. I would never recommend a “shortcut” if the result was not as good or better; I absolutely agree that patience and practice are essential to jewelry making! 🙂

loraine May 3, 2015 at 8:31 pm

Are you calling pick soldering point soldering? Although I can appreciate helpful hints, if a person can’t pick solder, they need to get good at it prior to attempting a job they need the skill for. the trick to pick soldering is getting familiar with your torch and heating up different metals and tools. All the skills neccessary to get good solder joins. If someone needs tweezers…. I can’t see them being ready to join two pieces of metal with solder. They may not have a good join due to being unfamiliar with temps, they may overheat the solder….shouldn’t a person learn all the steps, in order? I’m glad I first learned pick soldering. It isn’t that it’s intimidating, people need to learn patience, then learn to do it right. I only say these things, because I learned at the same time as a friend. She overheats the solder, or doesn’t get good flow because she took shortcuts. Now shes convinced herself she has to work within the limitations….rather than go back and learn to pick solder correctly.

jeanettecaines May 3, 2015 at 11:40 am

Hi Willem,
At the moment my book is only available on amazon.com. I’m working on the kindle version.
I guess I know now I need to offer a pdf version as well!
Thanks for asking,
Jeanette

Willem van den Berg May 3, 2015 at 3:39 am

Is your book not available in .pdf from? Price? Thank you.

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