Q. Take about 2g lead nitrate powder in a boiling tube. Hold the boiling tube with a pair of tongs and heat it over a flame. What do you observe? why does this happen? Give a brief discription of this activity.
Hi Linda:
The biggest advantage of stainless is it won’t cause your pickle to
plate out on your piece if a bit of it accidentally gets stuck
somewhere. You can also pickle with it in place, but that’s a bad
idea.
(Steel and silver have different heat shrinkage rates: you always
want to cut your wires before you quench your piece, or they’ll
’print’ little lines on your piece, or leave notches where they go
around an edge. So there’s no point in pickling with the wires in
place, as they should already have been cut free to avoid notching.)
One thing to remember about the thin stainless wire is that it’s
almost always a better idea to take a long length of it, bend it,
and twist it double so that you’ve got two strands instead of one.
Holds much better, and it’s much harder to burn through. (Same
technique as making long lengths of twisted precious metal wire:
Hand drill with a hook.)
FWIW,
Brian