Thank you for the feedback!

🙏

Thank you! Have fun, you'll love it!

Thank you! 🙂

Thank you! I buy most of my silver shot from Facebook groups, I can set you up with them if you'd like. But you can also buy online from Apmex for example.

Here's the one I use from Amazon. Borax 1/2 Pound Container Melting Flux 8 Oz. To Glaze Crucible Dishes for Gold Silver Jewelry by JTS a.co/d/aGhKDmk

Thank you!

It's very normal to hear what sounds like a cracking noise, however there should not be any actual visible cracks. Your glaze or borax should also not be chipping off, If it is you may need a better quality borax. Every time you use your crucible and heat it up it will make cracking noises when you are done as it's cooling off.

@@JoshuaAndersonLife its small hairline cracks like a spiderweb, but the borax i bought from amazon, it still seems to work as ive melted some stuff already

You should be fine, I've used crucibles with hairline cracks in them before. Use your best safety judgement.

@@JoshuaAndersonLife ok

I believe you can, however I've never used it, nor do I know the methods...

Hey, your torch is definitely hot enough. The key is to use very small pinches of borax at a time. You will have such a thin layer of glaze on the crucible it'll hardly be noticeable. It's always very tempting to keep putting on borax until you can see a thicker layer of glaze, however that is unnecessary and will burn off into your pours until all the excess is fully burned away. Whenever you see a small accumulation of borax while you're glazing, take a second to burn that away before applying more borax, or keep glazing to different areas avoiding that spot and it should continue to burn away as you're glazing. If you end up with a few areas of thicker glaze at the end that's just fine. You may have to clean up some of your pieces a little bit as that excess borax burns off with your pours.

@@JoshuaAndersonLife I think I just need a better torch. Because I can point the hottest part of my flame at the lumpy bits, but they never fully liquify, and flaten out. Also it dries pretty pourously. What kind of torch would you recommend for the entry level silver Smith?

@@JoshuaAndersonLife also, I saw a video on KZfaq, where a girl puts a piece of borax about the size of a golf ball in her crucible, and it melted perfectly to the shape of her crucible. I'm guessing that's more of a paste, and not straight up 20 mule team granules like I'm using?

@@redeyestones3738I used the paste and I’m getting the same bubbling and not getting smooth, also it’s charred, so definitely trapping carbon which is not what we’re going for…. I think I need to get the crucible a lot hotter before I start trying to add the borax so it actually sticks instead of just foaming and bubbling up.

I've never actually used the paste before. I would recommend getting the powder form of borax it's very inexpensive and likely much easier to apply.