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.

Pierceing and Sawing

A long time ago I made this sweet dog tag for my nephew:

I want to sell custom dogtags like this on my Etsy store, but I need another example piece...so I decided to do one. First I thought of doing a three tag set in old English script but it needed to be done in silver, and no garuntee it would sell. Somehow this morning I was inspired with the idea of a deer...So I found a photo of a stag, sketched it out and transfered it to copper. The process of piercing metal is simple enough, though the saw blade runs the risk of breaking so rather than turn the blade, the metal has to be moved while the blade continutes to go up and down at a 90 degree angle.

Sawing the metal

To start out one drills a hole, places the blade inside the hole, tightens the saw and blade, then cut away! Lets watch to see how my dogtag was created:

First Cut

Second cut, front leg

Third cut, back leg

Fouth, small detail of leg

Five, Ears

Six, Horns



Light polish, not done yet-still can see scratches!

I am happy to say with all that sawing I did not break a single saw blade. Some spots I was abkle to use files to clean up, other spots where too thing for that, so i used sandpaper in a saw frame. Finally, if that didn't work I used thread with tripoli polishing compound on it. I gave it a light polish, but I am hoping to put a green patina on the piece. Copper tends to stain, and isnt suitable to wearing next to the skin. But if i patina it and then seal it, it might be fine. At the very least I'll have one cool ass dogtag.

From humble beginnings

If you where to have a dog tag, what would you want on it? Initials, or an image?