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A newbies journey into the jewellery world- and the ring continues!
It's week two of Kernowcraft team member Katie's jewellery making course and she's beginning to get the hang of this jewellery malarky!
And week two began… this week I was completely petrified about ruining my ring by trying to solder it, but I really didn’t have anything to worry about! Soldering wasn’t as hard as I thought, it was just a case of remembering what to do and when! Firstly I sat my ring against a supablox with the joint to solder at the top. I then mixed a little bit of cone flux with water in a borax dish and using a fine paintbrush I painted this on to the joint. I then burnt off the water of the flux using a gas torch.
Next on the agenda was cutting the solder strip (something I have to admit I found a little difficult!) I cut two very tiny bits of hard solder and dipped them in flux before sticking them to the joint. Then concentrating on spreading the heat evenly around the ring I heated the ring using a gas torch and waited until I saw the solder melt, then I quickly removed the heat and quenched the ring in water. My soldering worked! And I was able to pop the ring into safety pickle to remove the fire stain.
I’ve been told that a sneaky cheat is to use solder pastewhich is perfect if your only doing one solder on a piece.
It was then time to finish the ring. Using a rawhide mallet and a triblet I hammered the ring until it was an even round shape. I then used a half round file to help disguise the solder join and sanded this down using sanding sheets to smooth it over before popping it into a tumble polisher to give the ring a high shine. And my first piece of jewellery was made!
Next and it was on to bangle making, something I couldn’t wait to do. I wear a lot of bangles and had always wondered how they were made. I chose a fairly thin sterling silver wire to start off with. I measured my wrist using a made up copper bangle and decided that I needed a 20cm of sterling silver wire length to allow for manoeuvre when I texture the bangle.
Using a file I sanded down the wire to make nice flat ends, I then roughly bent the wire round so that the ends fitted neatly together. Ensuring there was no gap at all ready for when I have my next attempt at soldering. So next week I’ll be testing my soldering skills once again when I try to solder the bangle!
To see our newbies previous post on making rings, click here!
7th october 2010.
