Burnt hands

Hi all, a problem I have when silver soldering is how to avoid burnt hands. Tried various thick gloves, currently welders gauntlets but after a while have to quickly shake the glove off as it gets too hot. I guess welders gloves are more for spatter protection.

What puzzles me is that I recently watched a video of a group of guys soldering a boiler and they had no hand protection, have all model engineers got asbestos hands except me? just looking at a website, Safety Gloves.co.uk, they seem do gloves for everything including 350 C resistant but are the right ones for our use.

What do you guys use?

Regards

Bill D.

Hi Bill. I have been gas welding, brazing & silver soldering since I was a boy on the farm 6o odd years ago. I have never had a burn on my hands through the process of actually welding. The occasional blister by being stupid and picking some thing up before it cooled is usually the problem Any of the welders gloves should be OK for silver soldering. A decent pair of tongs or pliers for moving things around should stop any accidents. I rarely use gloves and then only on my left hand when gas welding unless using very short pieces of rod but I usually join them so they are more than a foot long.

regards

I never wear gloves even to keep out the cold. Certainly never in the workshop

Just watch where you're putting your fingers

Roy

Edited By roy entwistle on 29/12/2019 12:39:18

Hard question to answer Bill when I don't know the size of work you are attempting but several things occur to me. BTW, most of my fabrication & boiler work is relatively small and very large boiler work will present more challenges.

The first thing is that I try to apply the solder 'pallets' before I apply the heat where ever possible. This not only helps to minimise the amount of solder used but also means that you are not feeding solder in and your hand will not therefore get hot! Where I do need to feed the solder in, I do so only once the work is hot enough, so again my hand isn't near the radiant heat for too long, so doesn't tend to get that hot (I don't generally wear gloves either).

However, there have been a few occasions where (even with gloves) things were getting a bit warm and I've got a simple heat shield made from tinplate. It's just a square of tinplate (with a hole in it to poke the solder through) and it's very light to use and certainly helps deflect the heat. Most of the time however, I don't find it necessary.

Regards,

IanT

Edited By IanT on 29/12/2019 12:51:28

What colour are your gloves?

Think Leslie’s Cube experiment at school. Only in reverse of the classic demonstration.

The inverse square law also applies, of course.

The other factor is time. Keep it to a minimum.

I've never worn heat protection on my hands when silver soldering or bronze brazing and never needed it.

What torch with what length of neck tube are you using? And assuming you stick-feed the solder into the work rather than lay on paillons before applying heat, how long a stick of solder are you using to feed with? If you do use short sticks you can hold them in mole grips to keep your feeding hand well away from the heat.

You could try burners gloves, they give more protection than welders gloves but tend to be mitt type.

Gloves can be a hot topic - pun intended. I very rarely wear gloves except when I’m handling hot metal, and then only Blacksmith style - one glove. I did a government training course many years ago and gloves were forbidden in most departments but especially those that required the use of rotating equipment. If you watch enough YouTube videos you’ll see that the Americans are completely nuts about wearing gloves even if they’re only using something like a screwdriver. I read a post on a forum some time back with arguments flying backwards and forwards about the dangers of wearing not only gloves but also jewellery like rings and bracelets when wood turning. Apparently many over there have to wear gloves when wood turning because the chips can get a little bit warm ...

Thanks for replies guys. I have knocked up a couple of heat shields, just waiting for a fresh supply of silver solder so will report on how I got on. The youtube that puzzled me is a couple of guys, both with burners heating up a largish boiler, two friends looked on filming. The guys soldering did not have any protection from radiant heat which must have been considerable and is the problem I have.

Bill D.

You could try holding the filler rod from further back so as not to get heat soak off the rod.