In jewelry the most common practice to join two metals is by using an intermediate one (an alloy between them acting as a "glue") which has a lower melting point than the two metals that need to be joined. As a consequence, when the bundle of metals is heated only the intermediate one will melt. This process is called soldering. The advantage of this method is that the two metals that need to be joined never come to their melting points so there is no danger to deform the actual jewelry. The disadvantage is that the connection between the two metals is weaker than a solid piece of metal.
Another method of joining two metals is simply putting them together and use a blowtorch on the joint in order to bring them to their melting point. When they start melting you remove the blowtorch and the two metals are as good as one single piece of metal. The advantage of this process is that the connection between them is unbreakable. This technique is called fusion and it is the most used method of TomisCraft jewelry to join gold and silver. The disadvantage is that this method requires larger quantities of the two metals and that it is more difficult than soldering. It requires a lot of experience to avoid the risks from bringing the metals to their melting points and thus it is a technique rarely used. High-end artistic jewelry that use this method are some times evaluated in the scale of thousands of dollars and are being sold in galleries. Many goldsmiths have discovered fusion by accident when using a blowtorch to overheat the metals.
