I’m still learning things about soldering, and I keep improving the more time I spend at my bench. Here’s the thing, I’ve gotten lazy about how much solder I use. I’m using more than I used to. I used to use about 1mm or less of wire solder for a small join. Lately, I’ve been using 2mm or slightly more. It’s still a tiny amount, but it’s double!
To force myself to do better, I tried using solder pallions. These are pre-cut itty bitty rectangles of solder that are .5x1mm and are very thin. I need magnifiers to use them since my work light went out. (My charcoal block also really needs sanding, it’s filthy.) Y’all. It’s life changing. I tried both pick soldering with them, and placing them before firing. Both methods worked like a dream, and there’s so much less solder mess to clean up afterward. I mean, duh. But the reality of it was eye-opening. In the photo, you can see the back of two earrings. The left is the too much solder, after cleanup. You can still visibly see a ton of solder around the joins, comparatively. The second one, I didn’t do any additional cleanup on at all. I just polished it as is.
I used two pallions on the ear wire on the second one, and that was just for insurance. I think one, properly placed, would have done it.
Even Cellini warned about using too much solder! Some things don’t change, even after hundreds of years.
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