Soldering Skillz

So I started making a set of earrings from wire and decided at some point to share a little.

first off, I had a ton of solder joints. All the bends in the wire i notched the wire, bent the wire then soldered in the notch to give it strength again. As you can see I used my tweezers as heat sinks to prevent certain joints from accidentally flowing. For the most part I was able to use hard solder, but the spot that had 4 joints at once I decided to use medium on. you can see in the picture below H for hard solder, M for medium. No need for easy.

 I then put on the earring post with medium, again using tweezers to prevent that one joint from accidentally getting too much heat and flowing on me.

 I then added the wires for the pearls and soldered them closed. I polished up the prongs so they were smooth.

 I decided to try something so i oxidized the posts

 And tumbled them so the oxidation became permanent....i might touch up a little to make the darker once they are set.

 Aand this is what i got: black tourmaline and pearls. Super classy.  I overworked one prong so i gotta re-solder it, then liver of sulfur, then tumble then reset. le sigh. Almost done, though. Hope it gives you some ideas how to solder lots of joints together.

Step by Step Diamond Earrings

Howdy howdy. I've been up to lots, taking picture meant for my blog but never getting around to it. Sorry guys. How about lets go over these earrings I made tonight. First off I've been trying to figure out the secret of engraving. I have a little project going trying to create a realilistic hazelnut leaf. I engraved the veins, now im hoping to shape it some and eventually enamel it. But, main thing i wanted tou to see was the engraving.

So today I went to the Willamette building downtown and decided to drop in on the diamond dealer. At some point I want to make a fancy suite for myself so I wanted to check out what he had and I picked up two conagc diamonds. I decided to start with real basic premade earring studs. It saved me time, but its not my own if I don't DO something to make it my own. Take a look: one stud as sold, and one engraved.

Not too bad, I don't have the best engraving setup (infact,  it would probably make most goldsmiths shudder), but I was able to do something nice.

After engraving both studs I attached wires for the pearl to dangle from.

Now from there I had choices: do I want to solder the ring closed or not? I decided to leave it open and slip the pearl dangle on and shut it firmly closed when done and not risk soldering/melting everything. Now That I have the wire on I need to clean up the metal and set the diamonds.

Pretty little things. I personally prefer colored diamonds to colorless...now attach the pearls and viola!

Lovely little earrings in just two hours.

Creating Settings for Roman Coins

A long time ago I was asked by my mother to fix a pair of earrings. But because they had patinaed Roman coins bezel set in them, I decided to recreate the settings. I started off with this:

First thing to do was measure where I wanted the bezel, and where I wanted to open the backs.

After measuring I sawed out part of the silver disk to both lighten it and allow the backs of the coins to be seen. I then polished the disks lightly because I would be sautering the bezel on soon.

I created the bezels using fine silver, before sautering on the the disks i need to check that the coins fit.

Sautering.

Once I had everything attached  I had to polish. Polishing around the beads was difficult, but I got it. Finally, I set the coins and gave one last polish.

The final earrings are a little rough, and the beads do not match each other perfectly. But, the coins themselves don't match each other, and are rather rough. I wanted to give it that slightly imperfect look.