Soldering supplies

[etherwalker]

I bought a box with 7 pounds of solder, and it also had a bunch of these metal sticks. Any idea what they are?

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[etherwalker]

The solder box was $5. I also got a 10# jar of fishing weights for $1.

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[Bulldogger]

That looks like lead canes for stained glass work. If they bend very easily, they are likely near pure. Most plumbing solder alloy is cast and marked.
BDGR

[Wheelguns 1961]

It looks like silver solder, for use in A/C, refrigeration lines.

[AZBronco]

May be brazing rod. About 1/16 by 1/8" ? Clean the flat side and look for a number ( 5, 10, 15, etc.) If a number is on the stick , that tells you the percent of silver in the rod. The brand of the manufacture etc. Some rods have NO silver content.

[RogerDat]

Would help to know if there are any stampings on those sticks. On piece almost looks like it has a gold color, like a brazing rod. Lead came will have a channel that allows the stained glass to have the metal wrapped around it.

If you keep hitting garage sales and buying old solder you can plan on melting it all into a single batch. Then get a sample from the batch tested. Have found that the end results can be anywhere from 15% to 63% with around 25% being the most common results I have gotten.

[Hossfly]

That stick stuff looks just like what we do with short sticks melt ends together to us all, mostly because it was so expensive to buy by the lb. if silver content was high. Brand name might be Silphos etc.

[bangerjim]

Sil-Flo solder......silver-bearing solder......bronze brazing rod.......could be any of these. Picture too dark to tell. I use them all. All of those are high-temp solders/brazing materials.

Some flat gray ones could lead came from window-maker. Is there a channel in them for glass?

Banger

[pete501]

I agree the short pieces that are soldered together could be silver solder. I do the same with my short pieces of silver bearing solder.

[etherwalker]

I don't think they are stained glass leading (my wife used to do stained glass). Silver solder seems more likely, though I can't find any markings on them. I'll try to look in better light.

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[etherwalker]

One of the round rods is marked OXWELD No. 25M bronze. The sticks that may be silver solder don't have any markings (they are 1/16" x 1/8" in cross section as AZBronco mentioned). It doesn't look like this will be any use for casting, but I got my money's worth from the solder (one roll of solder I might even use for soldering).

[Youngtimer]

I did a fair amount of silver soldering years ago and we would solder the small pieces together to use 100% of it due to the high cost. It came in several shapes, round, square, rectangle and to the best of my memory did not have any markings on it. The only marking was what was on the packaging it came in. Also the corrosion looking matter on it is likely flux residue. We needed to remove the flux to prevent corrosion of the piping joints after soldering.