Hi Thynk, and welcome to Artmetal. Odds are, the best way to join the ends with some sort of fusion is to braze or silver solder the ends together. In order to acheive that however, i think you're going to need a a torch with a finer and hotter flame then what you can get from a normal propane torch. Ideally you want to use a micro torch, probably Oxygen/Propane. Usually the trick to solders is the prep, flux, and locality of the heat so the problem with the soft solder and steel might be that, although I'm certainly no expert with soldering. I do know that trying to solder small pieces can be a bear since it's so easy to get the whole piece hot instead of just where you want the solder.
As for the quenching, there are many reasons. The most common are that your finished with that section and are cooling it to handle it, or your cooling it down past it's malleability point so it won't move while working on a section adjacent to it. That dark coating is scale, and occurs when ever red hot metal interacts with the air. If you wire brush the red hot metal before cooling you can remove most of it and be left with a nice silvery finish. If you wait till it's completely cooled it can be a real bear to get off.
As for protecting the finish, there are many options from waxes, to clear coats, to lacquers. Permalac makes a clear coat "specifically" for steel and Nikolas(sp?) makes a clear coat specifically for copper/brass. Kind of need to imagine how much abuse/handling the piece is going to take before picking a protective coat.
As for tools, you'll have to pick the brains of some of the jewelry experts on the site, but you might look up Ganoskin(sp?) which is a site dedicated to the jewelry arts i think.
Hi Thynk, and welcome to
Hi Thynk, and welcome to Artmetal. Odds are, the best way to join the ends with some sort of fusion is to braze or silver solder the ends together. In order to acheive that however, i think you're going to need a a torch with a finer and hotter flame then what you can get from a normal propane torch. Ideally you want to use a micro torch, probably Oxygen/Propane. Usually the trick to solders is the prep, flux, and locality of the heat so the problem with the soft solder and steel might be that, although I'm certainly no expert with soldering. I do know that trying to solder small pieces can be a bear since it's so easy to get the whole piece hot instead of just where you want the solder.
As for the quenching, there are many reasons. The most common are that your finished with that section and are cooling it to handle it, or your cooling it down past it's malleability point so it won't move while working on a section adjacent to it. That dark coating is scale, and occurs when ever red hot metal interacts with the air. If you wire brush the red hot metal before cooling you can remove most of it and be left with a nice silvery finish. If you wait till it's completely cooled it can be a real bear to get off.
As for protecting the finish, there are many options from waxes, to clear coats, to lacquers. Permalac makes a clear coat "specifically" for steel and Nikolas(sp?) makes a clear coat specifically for copper/brass. Kind of need to imagine how much abuse/handling the piece is going to take before picking a protective coat.
As for tools, you'll have to pick the brains of some of the jewelry experts on the site, but you might look up Ganoskin(sp?) which is a site dedicated to the jewelry arts i think.
Hope this helps and keep posting your work
Jake
Jake Balcom
Mettle Design
Lincoln, NE