Creating your own jewelry is a creative hobby and a fun way to express your inner artist through personal, unique designs. The trickiest part of jewelry making is soldering. Soldering fine, detailed jewelry pieces takes precision and concentration, but soldering techniques can be mastered with practice and time.
Choosing Your Design
Keep the design simple for your first attempt at jewelry making. While each piece of jewelry you create is a personal work of art, whether it's inspired by your favorite designer's work, modeled after an heirloom piece you've always loved or created by simply letting your imagination guide you, remember: finely detailed jewelry will require a masterly hand at soldering.
Preparing to Solder
First, set up your soldering workspace, which should be well-ventilated. Install an overhead lamp over a ceramic tile, which you'll use as a base for your jewelry as you solder. Things to keep nearby include tongs or tweezers, a jar of water, a thin paintbrush, solder, flux and a torch. Use silver solder for silver jewelry, and gold for gold.
Clean your jewelry metal thoroughly and use the tongs or tweezers to handle it so that you don't get any oil on the metal.
Fluxing Your Metals
There are several fluxing techniques, but the simplest method is to use a thin paintbrush to apply the flux to the metal, and then heat it together with the solder once it has been set in place. Flux is a corrosive chemical, so be sure to protect yourself with gloves and a respirator mask before you use it.
The Soldering Process
Soldering is a process that connects metals by filling tiny spaces created by heated particles moving apart. It does not require very much solder to fill those tiny spaces, so be sure not to apply more than you'll need.
First, place small pieces of solder at each joint on your design, using tweezers. If you plan to solder more than once, use hard solder first and softer solder in your next layers.
Then, use your heated torch to draw the solder into the metal joint. Keep the torch's flame on the solder until it begins to run. Once you've connected each piece, drop the metal into a jar of water to freeze the solder in place.
There may be a few areas that need to be filed down or gently re-soldered, but remember, the more you practice, the more precise you'll become, and the finer your jewelry pieces will be.
Tags: your jewelry, detailed jewelry, each piece, jewelry making, jewelry pieces, more than, thin paintbrush