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Step 5A little more information...
If you want to use posts on your earrings, you will want to solder them in place before polishing. Do this by putting a piece of solder where you want the post to go, hold the post in your tweezers, then heat the solder until it slumps and stick the post right on top of it, while continuing to heat the whole piece and post. The solder should flow and attach the post to the metal.
The picture on this page is a pair of copper wire earrings that I soldered together, then blackened to help hide the solder seams. Copper in its natural state will slowly tarnish to a brown color, but if you want to keep it shiny, spray it with a clear lacquer or polyurethane. Silver will also tarnish, but it is much easier to polish back to shiny silver so I usually do not use lacquer on it.
Using a variety of pliers (round nose, needle nose, etc) you can create many interesting shapes that can be soldered together. Soldered jewelry is more sturdy than wire wrapped jewelry as it can not come undone or pulled apart unless it is broken. Use soldering to create interesting chains for bracelets, necklaces, or many types of earrings.
Good luck and let me know how your soldering experiments turn out!
The picture on this page is a pair of copper wire earrings that I soldered together, then blackened to help hide the solder seams. Copper in its natural state will slowly tarnish to a brown color, but if you want to keep it shiny, spray it with a clear lacquer or polyurethane. Silver will also tarnish, but it is much easier to polish back to shiny silver so I usually do not use lacquer on it.
Using a variety of pliers (round nose, needle nose, etc) you can create many interesting shapes that can be soldered together. Soldered jewelry is more sturdy than wire wrapped jewelry as it can not come undone or pulled apart unless it is broken. Use soldering to create interesting chains for bracelets, necklaces, or many types of earrings.
Good luck and let me know how your soldering experiments turn out!
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I was wondering if I might be able to use a soldering iron - if you know - possibly a low-temp? If so, do you know what type of flux and other material might be needed?
I would attempt to solder the metal together, first, then load the crystals in the prongs after cooling.
thank you.
Thanks again, though!
any advice would be much appreciated
thanks!
The easiest way to do this would be to use solders with different flow temperatures, usually referred to as hard, medium, and easy. 'Hard' solder melts at the highest temperature, and 'easy' at the lowest. There is also a 'very easy' but it is usually only used for repair work. You should start with hard solder and progress downwards so that the first things you solder are at the highest melting temperature and you get progressively colder. If you are working on silver, you want to use the highest melting point solder you can on all visible seams because hard solder has a better color than medium or easy does. On brass it shouldn't matter too much.
The other alternative is to get your hands on some yellow ocher. If you make a paste of yellow ocher and water and paint that onto the solder seams you do not want to flow, the ocher will inhibit the flow of the solder. If you use yellow ocher you should be very careful to wash it all off before you place the piece in your pickle because the iron in the ocher will contaminate your pickle and cause it to copper plate your metal.
Hope this helps!