Annealing German Silver ?????

[JoeC]

How does one go about annealing German Silver?
I know that with brass, silver , of gold , you heat it up and quench it. I tried that with a piece of german silver,
but either it didn't work right (seemed to get harder) , or
that is not how to do it. Any suggestions..........???
Thanks
Joe.

 

[crockett]

To the best of my knowledge what you did was the proper thing. Did you get it cherry red and was there enough liquid in the quench to rapidly quench? Try again.

 

[mike alexandre]

When you anneal something you heat it and allow it to cool slowly, this makes it maluable and easier to work with. Heating and rapid quenching is part of the hardening process.

 

[Doc Arroyo]

justmike-
Heat and cool slow is the method of annealing iron or steel. Heat and quench is the method of annealing brass, and silver. Both of these metals are work hardened.

My guess is tha german silver would be handled the same as brass. eace:

 

[canyonman]

Doc,
You are correct, with iron or steel it is just the reverse. I make knives and that is exactly what I do when I make bolsters and such...Red hot and cold water.
A mistake some people make is thinking that German Silver and Brass are about the same, Brass is much softer than German Silver so when you work with them there is considerable difference. :m2c:

Larry

 

[SAJones]

1st, is it German silver or white bronze? Got a triggerguard once, & doing a slight bend to fit the wrist it snapped. Fragile as glass. Sent it back to TOTW, & they told me of the white bronze, & how to bend it. (Instructions came w/ a brand new tg, no charge. Been doin' business w/ them ever since.) Unfortunately, that was 20 years ago & I don't recall the procedure. However, I still can't see the difference between the white bronze & German silver; maybe some of our more knowledgeable experts out there would know.

 

[crockett]

I think canyonman has a point. In knife making some of the really tough steel like ATS 34, when annealed, are almost as tough as say 440C when tempered. Probably because of the alloy. In other words, you might just have to deal with working in a more resistant material.

 

[Zonie]

German Silver is roughly 50% Copper, 20% Nickel, 30% Zinc.

Bronze is roughly 90% Copper, 10% Tin. It is harder and less ductile than brass so it is easier to break when bending it.

Brass is roughly 75% Copper, 25% Zinc.

Copper, Brass and Bronze are annealed (softened) by heating to a red heat and quenching in water.

I could not find information dealing directly with annealing German Silver, but with its high Copper content, I would expect it to use the same annealing method as Brass or Bronze.

The alloy percentages given above are prefaced with "roughly" because there are hundreds of variations available.
Usually the Brasses and Bronzes which are "white" have higher percentages of the white metal (Tin or Zinc). This often makes them more difficult to bend.

Because of the presence of Nickle in German Silver, it is usually pretty tough stuff to bend, even when annealed.

All castings usually have a rather large crystalline grain structure which is easy to break, so if you need to bend them very much you should anneal them first.

Brass and Bronze sheet metal has a much finer grain structure than castings which allows it to be bent without breaking it. It will "work harden" from bending, so if you need to repeatedly bend it, you should anneal it.

I have found that most of the sand castings we get for muzzleloading furniture are Brass and are quite ductile. Most of the Investment castings available are Bronze and will often break unless annealed before bending.

 

[Zonie]

Nothing like putting your foot in your mouth to end the day. :redface:



I ordered a German Silver Trigger guard for my Pistol Project.
It is a nice rough sand casting but as could be expected, it doesn't match the contour of the stock outline so the tang needed bending.

Recalling my own words of advice here on the Forum, I heated the tang up to a nice Cherry Red color and quenched it in water.

I bent it some where the back of the loop returns to the wood, but that left the lower area of the tang protruding forward.
As I attempted to bend it back to where it belongs, SNAP! It cracked about 1 1/2 inches from the bottom end.
Looking at the fracture, it had an extremely fine grain, but it was obviously brittle.

Taking the broken portion, I decided to experiment by annealing it using the "Steel method".
I heated it to medium red and held it there for several minutes.
I then moved it back away from the torch until it was black red. I then slowly moved it further away from the torch and held it there for a minute.
I repeated this in roughly 2 inch steps from the torch until I was still in the hot zone but a good 13 inches from the torch and then let it air cool to room temperature.

Placing the "annealed" piece (1/8 thick X 3/8 wide) in my vise, I used a crescent wrench and bent it a full 90 degrees without a problem of any kind. The resulting fillet Radius is about 3/16 inch.
When you can bend a 1/8 inch piece of material 90 degrees with a 3/16 radius fillet, it must be truly ductile!

After this adventure, I will say:


When Annealing German Silver use the Steel Method of heating it to a red heat and cooling it very slowly.
The high concentration of Nickle seems to make using the Brass/Bronze method unsuitable.