Soldering Tips 1

I've made jewellery for as long as I can remember, starting, as I'm sure many of us did, with childhood trips to the bead shop to buy beads to string on cord and headpins. For many years wire was my best friend, especially once I learnt how to make my own findings. Then, about 7 years ago, I decided to teach myself how to solder jump rings closed as I was fed up with paying so much for mass produced ones - this was before handcrafted components were easily available on Etsy. I was hooked, and it completely changed my style of jewellery. It has also led me to teaching silversmithing and jewellery design at my local college. Now, one of my favourite possessions is my blowtorch (well, my three blow torches actually), and I find the whole process of watching the solder flow across the join, of using the heat of the flame to draw it to where it needs to be a lovely relaxing way of spending the day!

This post is one of three on soldering giving you some of the hints and tips that I teach my evening class students. This time I'm going to show you the basic tools needed to solder silver and copper, and also talk about the different types of solder available  - and why you can get different types of solder!

This is my soldering area - a little messy, I know, but soldering isn't exactly the cleanest part of making jewellery. You don't actually need a lot of equipment to start soldering. Each tool is quite cheap, although the price can obviously add up, but if you look after the tools well they will last you for years.

Going through the labels we have:

1. Old slate tiles - left over from a DIY project, these protect the table below from the heat. You can buy soldering sheets that do the same job, but tiles are cheaper!
2. Soldering block - extra protection from the heat. These also absorb some of the heat from the flame and pass it back into the silver, so if you have several pieces on the block waiting to be soldered (for example if you are soldering lots of links for a chain), they will start to heat up before the flame even touches them. I have a couple of blocks, and if I am soldering a big piece I will prop a couple up behind the block I'm working on to radiate the heat back to the metal.
3. Charcoal block - used to melt small balls of silver such as in this tutorial
   
4. Reverse action tweezers - these take a bit of getting used to as they open when you push the handles, opposite to how most pliers work. This is useful though, as I often use them to hold, for example, an earwire in place on the back of the earring during soldering and I don't have to remember to hold them tightly closed, they do the job for me. They are insulated.
5. Solder probe - not essential put useful for pushing solder back to where you want it to be if it moves during the process.
6. Third hand with tweezers - not essential but useful for holding small pieces during soldering.
   
7. Torches - I've got two hand torches, and also a propane torch that feeds of a gas bottle under my desk, out of sight. It is the heat of the piece of work that melts the solder, not the heat of the flame, and so if I am soldering a big piece such as a bangle I need to use a bigger torch to heat the silver up enough. The smaller torch is ideal for chains, clasps, earwires etc. The small torch came from Cookson Gold, as did most of my soldering equipment, and the big one is a plumber's torch from a DIY store!
8. Quench pot - such a sophistcated expensive piece of kit! Never put hot metal in the pickle (more about pickle in a minute - it's not what you put with your cheese sandwich), always quench it to cool it down first. And if you manage to melt the side of it with a hot piece of metal you can always eat some more ice cream to get a new pot.
9. Goggles - you've only got one pair of eyes!
10. Binding wire - useful for holding together larger pieces during soldering.
11. Pennies! - useful for propping up small pieces while you solder them.
12. Snips/shears - use these to cut solder strips into smaller pieces (pallions) ready to use for soldering.

  A few more bits and pieces for you:

1. Pickle pot - another expensive piece of equipment! You can buy expensive pickling units, but I use an old slow cooker that cost £2 at a carboot sale. Safety Pickle comes as salts that you mix with water. Always read the safety sheet that comes with it. It is a mild acid solution that cleans off the copper oxides that form on the surface of sterling silver when it is heated. It works quicker if it is warm, but will still work when cold, just a lot more slowly. My pickle sits in a pyrex dish that sits in water inside the cooker. I can't put the pickle straight into the cooker as I haven't got a ceramic insert in mine, it's just steel. If you put steel or iron (eg reverse action tweezers, binding wire) into the pickle, all of the copper the pickle has collected off the silver as it's cleaned the oxidisation off will go back on the silver! Which leads me to....
2. Brass tweezers - use these to take work out of the pickle instead of steel tweezers. You can also buy plastic tweezers.

This picture shows my soldering materials - flux and solder in various forms.

1. Borax cone and dish - a cheap and easy to use form of flux. Put a very little amount of water in the bottom of the dish and grind the cone in it to form a milky paste which is then painted onto the silver. Remember solder will only flow, rather than ball up, if flux is present.
2. Auflux - an artificial form of  flux, again relatively cheap but doesn't last as long as a cone. Again, just paint it on where it is needed.
3. Solder strips - the traditional form of solder. Cut into smaller pieces (pallions) ready to use for soldering. I have a little pot for each solder - Hard, Medium and Easy - I'll explain those terms in a bit!
4. Solder paste syringes - a modern form of solder - some people love it, some people hate it saying it's cheating! I say it has got its place and can be useful, but it doesn't replace solder strips. Solder paste is basically ground up solid solder mixed with a flux so that it's ready to use. I only really use it for chain work as I find it more convenient - just work along the row of links waiting to be soldered, squeezing a little bit out at a time! It is much more expensive that solder strips though. Again, I've got Hard, Medium and Easy solder.

So why the different names for solders? Hard, Medium and Easy solders have different melting temperatures - hard has a higher melting temperature than medium (ie. it is harder to melt), medium has a higher melting temperature than easy. You can also sometimes buy extra-easy solder which has an even lower melting temperature, but I find that a bit sluggish to flow and so tend to avoid it. By the way, the different types of solder all form nice strong joins if used properly, the names refer to how hard or easy they are to melt, not how hard or strong the join is.

Why do you need different melting temperatures? Because you often need to solder more than one join on a piece of work, and when you solder the second join, you don't want the first to remelt or it is likely to weakend. Take the Turquoise Shells pendant shown above as an example.The bezel around the cabochon was soldered closed with hard solder, and then after shaping was soldered onto the base plate with medium solder - the temperature needed to melt the medium solder wasn't high enough to remelt and weaken the easy solder. The prongs and the bail were soldered on with easy solder. They were only small pieces to solder on, so as long as I was quick and carefully with what I was doing I could use easy solder on more than one join without affecting the hard or medium solder or the previous easy solder joins. If I only need to solder one join, for example on a bangle, then I just use easy solder as it's easier to melt, but some people prefer to use medium solder as it can be a better colour match to the silver. I use the same techniques to solder copper, and to solder silver and copper together, although I do find that copper needs more flux than silver does.

Do let me know in the comments if you have any questions and please do leave a comment if you have a tip of your own to share!My next post on soldering will be in a fortnight's time so I will do my very best to answer any questions either in the comments below this post or in my next post, which will cover how and why soldering works, how to get it to work (most of the time) and what to do if it goes wrong.

Jo Tinley
Daisychain Designs

Tutorial: Glass Headpin Earrings

Are you taking part in the AJE Earring challenge? The first bi-weekly blog reveal link-up was a few days ago, and the creativity was amazing!

Just in case you are out of ideas, or maybe considering joining, but don't know what to make, I threw together a quick tutorial for how to use handmade artisan headpins. These were made by me (and maybe I will list a pair or two later in the day when I have good lighting), but this tutorial should work with just about any artisan created headpin.

Supplies: 
-Glass headpins x2
-Ear wires

Tools: 
-round nose pliers, bail pliers, or something round for making loop in the wire
-flat nose pliers
-wire cutters

Directions: 
These will take longer to read than to actually make the earrings....

Using a mandrel or bail pliers, decide how long you want your earrings to dangle and line up the headpins next to each other. Bend the wire around the tool to create the first part of the loop.

Put one headpin on the work surface for later. 

Put the same tool used to make your hook in the wire and finish bending the wire into a loop. Gently "crook" the loop back so that it resembles a lollipop on a stick rather than a lopsided circle. 

Grab the loop with flat nose pliers.

Begin wrapping wire around the stick of the lollipop without tweaking down on the "stick" or you will bend it out of shape. While this part is very loose...meaning it doesn't have to be done a specific way, it's a good idea to kind of have an idea in your head of what you want it to look like when you're finished. Then just let go and wrap. I prefer loosey goosey. But have done tight evenly spaced wrapping too. 

Once you get down to the end of the headpin, make a loose swirl around the top of the bead. It kind of looks like a bead cap. 

Snip the end of the wire and fiddle with the shape of the swirl until you're happy with it. 

Repeat for the 2nd headpin. However, if you want your earrings to be mirrors of each other, wrap the loop in the opposite direction. For the first one (picture close to the top of the post), the wire comes out on top of the loop. On the one below, the wire is under the loop. If you don't care about your earrings being mirror images, don't worry about it. I doubt anyone will notice one way or the other. 

Another little tidbit. Do NOT obsess about getting the wire wraps exactly the same. They are supposed to be loose and free flowing. 

Attach your dangles to ear wires. If you want to embellish further, go for it! I prefer simple myself. But that doesn't mean more isn't better. 

Please share your efforts if you use this tutorial by leaving a link in the comments. I would love to see! 

Is anyone interested in making their own simple ear wires, but don't know how? Would you like a tutorial for that? Leave a comment if you are. 

Have a great week!

-Jen Cameron

Glass Addictions

Trade Beads Series - Venetian Trade Beads

This is the first in a series of short articles regarding "trade beads."  When I started researching the topic, I found that there are so many trade beads that each type really deserves a separate look!  The first topic is Venetian Trade Beads!

Venetian beads have been in production since the 1200s, first in Venice and then on the small island of Murano in Italy.  There were only a handful of makers who knew the "secret" of the glass bead, and therefore the market was tightly held.  Beadmakers were not permitted to share their secrets with others.  The business was very lucrative - merchants commissioned and used Venetian beads to purchase many items, including spices and oils. 

Essentially there were two types of beads produced - chevron beads and millefiore.  Examples of chevron beads are seen below.  Individual chevron beads were produced by the "winding" method whereby several layers of glass (usually 7-9) were wound to create a star like pattern.  This bead became in such demand that a production process was begun, whereby tubes of beads were created and then cut to produce individual beads.

Photo courtesy of The Bead Chest

A second type of bead produced was called the millefiore bead, or thousand flowers.  This bead was produced by making a base bead and applying murrine (small chips of long, pulled, decorative glass) to a base bead.  They are called millefiori because the chips resembled flowers. 

Photo courtesy of The Bead Chest

Because of the high demand for the beads, production of some beads was actually outsourced to Bohemia (now the Czech Republic).  Glass tubes were shipped to Bohemia; the workers would cut the tubes into equally sized beads, and then ship them back to Murano for shaping and polishing! I find this fact quite interesting and think it would be another good topic to research - the history of the czech bead!

I used some information sourced from The Bead Chest - you can find many examples of trade beads including ancient Venetian beads in their store, as well as information on their blog.  Below you can see examples of my own modern Venetian bead collection.  I purchased these in Venice several years ago.  My beads are blown bead (hollows) and also beads that have silver foil as an inside layer.  You can also find millefiore and chevron beads today, but I am partial to these ones! 

A reliable source for modern Venetian beads is the Venetian Bead Shop.  You can purchase "venetian" beads in hobby stores or other on-line venues, but you do have to realize that many of them are made in China and won't be genuine Venetian beads, nor will they be annealed or sturdy for your designs. 

(Not So) Mismatched Monday: Sweetheart Earrings

I've been suffering from terrible headaches lately (most likely TMJ related) so please excuse the fact that these earrings are not mismatched.  I find it hard to concentrate while my head is ready to explode.  And with that bit of TMI, I give you "Sweetheart Earrings"...

I tend to feel a red overload after Christmas so I didn't want to use that color for my Valentine earrings.  Turns out I had a delightful little stash of pink beads up in the office so it all worked out perfectly.  They are long and swingy, just the way I like my earrings!

I'm going to let you in on a little secret too, the lace I used for the porcelain charms is from my mom's wedding dress.  When they were cleaning out the New Jersey house and preparing to move to Utah, my mom found the dress and it wasn't preserved properly.  She told me to do whatever I wanted with it.  I pulled the lace off and now she can have as much jewelry as she wants with the lace-pattern from her dress!

Materials:
Porcelain lace heart charms: Suburban Girl Studio LLC
Ceramic mini heart charms: White Clover Kiln
Silver-filled ear wires, crystals, findings and chain: Fusion Beads

Do you feel the love?

Diana P.
Suburban Girl Studio LLC