Hi, my name is Angela Busby. I'm a trainer at Stuller. And today we're going to talk about soldering with rose gold solder. We've had several requests for how to solder rose gold, it can be tricky so there's a few things that you can try in order to make sure you succeed with rose gold solder.   The first thing I do is I make sure that the pickle is on and hot and clean. And you need a clean ultrasonic and we're going to clean both the piece and the solder. If it's not clean it can be a little difficult to solder, so we're going to start with that. We're going to clean our piece in the ultrasonic.  And we're going to clean our solder. 

So we're going to make sure as well as using the ultrasonic, we're going to pickle both the ring and the solder. And make sure you use your copper tweezers, otherwise you'll contaminate your pickle. So the first thing you want to do is make sure that you use a boric acid and alcohol solution. And you place it on your third hand, and we're ready to solder.  I like to heat the piece pretty good before I even attempt to put the solder on there because if I put the solder on there too quick then all it does is kind of burn out the alloys, and if you see that solder start to sparkle you should pick up another piece because it will cause pitting.  And I don't particularly care to use a light when I'm soldering because you can see whether or not that metal starts to melt, especially if you're flowing on rose gold. And it takes a good bit of heat. And there you have it.

And then we're going to place it in the pickle for a couple of minutes.  If your pickle is clean and hot, it should immediately remove that boric acid solution off of there.  So once you're finished and you take it out of your pickle you make sure that the solder has flowed completely, and if it hasn't then you'll have to go back to the drawing board. But it is flowed, we have a nice solder joint.  And now we will prep it and polish it.

The next thing were gonna work on is soldering a post to an earring. The same thing applies to the earring and the post. You want to make sure that your piece has been cleaned in the ultrasonic first, and you want to make sure your post is cleaned as well, and then you'll put them both in the pickle, making sure they're both clean and free of any oils or dirt or anything you may have used to prep.  We're going to dip the piece in boric and we're going to create a nice coating, and we're going to do the same with the earring post.  We're going to pick our solder ball up, and sometimes we have a little trouble with these, if they're really small going on an earring the solder ball will start rolling around your board. So I'll put a little bit of boric on that pick and it'll help me pick up that solder ball.  We're going to want to the same with the earring and make sure the piece has been pickled. Let it set for a second or two, and it's ready for polish.  

If you have followed those simple steps, making sure both your piece and the solder have been cleaned in the ultrasonic and has been pickled as well, and you have been successful with soldering your solder, the next step is to inspect your piece, make sure you have no gaps no holes no pits. Inspect it and then it is ready to be prepped and polished. And check to make sure your post is on straight. And that's it, it's as simple as that.