What temperature does a soldering iron need to be at to solder silver?

Question

My husband wants to solder a couple of silver linking rings into a bracelet for me. He has two soldering irons, one is a 25 watt, the other is 50 watts and uses both of these for soldering brass or nickel in modelling. We are not sure if either would be suitable for soldering silver. Can anyone help, please?

Answer 1

Neither....

Silver solder require much higher temperature of well above 1000 degrees and are usually done with small torch, rather than regular electric soldering irons which can reach maximum of about 850 degrees. The rating of Watts has nothing to do with the temperature: they are heat capacity.

You might want to purchase a small pen type torch or slightly larger one that use butane for fuel. They are available at Radio shack and many home centers, like Home Depot.

Answer 2

If thats pure silver, you wont be able to melt the silver with a soldering iron. Silver solder actually melts WAY below the temperature of pure silver due to its tin content.

Answer 3

If you can melt nickel with it then Silver won't be a problem. The melting point of silver is a few hundred degrees C lower than nickel. The only concern I would have would be with oxidation because most solders have a flux in them to shield the metal from air while it's still hot.

Answer 4

since you are not melting the actual silver and you are infact melting solder either one would work if you are talking about "welding" the siler rings together then you will need an acedeline torch.

Answer 5

more than 100 C, less than 6000C

Answer 6

You may want to read this.

Answer 7

try the finger test.it never fails!