Filigree pendant

[Icarleug]

Back from the weekend.
My mum loved it!
She couldn't really believe that I made it at first, but she know I usually don't joke about me making things. I hadn't told them about my silversmithing since I wanted to surprise her.

Will have to come up with a few simpler ideas to make during spring. Possibly still filigree, but I will need to practice piercing and a few other things as well.

Thank you all for your kind words!

/Andreas

[Tabby66]

I'm not surprised your mum was pleased.....I bet she's rather pleased you've taken this up!!

[Nick martin]

Im certain theres a lot of patience and swearing gone into that! Looks great though, well done.

Nick

[Didi]

Andreas, thats lovely! I can imagine the setting wanting to pop out while it was being soldered. Looking forward to seeing some spring work from you
Didi.

[Nancy Layer]

Simply lovely. Your work is beautiful. I'm just starting to learn and I seem to be melting wires in some places. Guess it just takes practice.

[Dennis]

If you look at the various videos, you will see that they invariably use a large bushy flame for soldering.
You also need a pond with goldfish and aquatic plants to quench it in. Welcome to the forum, Dennis.

[Icarleug]

Practice but mostly patience.

One advice I can give is to not solder too much in one go, make sure your solder as well as all the silver is clean (I usually dip it in pickle to get rid of any grease).
If you are soldering much at the same time you must be able to heat it from the opposite side of the solder (and be prepared to pull the plug or all will melt at the same time).
Always solder in no direct light if possible so you can see the color of the piece.
Heat the piece evenly (but try to avoid direct flame to the solder if you can) and move move move the flame, take care to not have a "center spot" that get more flame than the rest of the piece.
Then when it starts to glow head in for the kill, the solder should flow right away. If it doesn't and it glows very red almost on the orange side, or starts to turn shiny (well, depending on solder grade, I use hard solder), remove the flame, sigh and cool it. Scrape of any solder remains, pickle, clean and start over.
There is more than one time I got frustrated and just went "melt you d*mn solder!" and instead melted something else. The most probable reason it won't flow is that there is some kind of grease or other dirt that keeps it from flowing nicely.
Easiest way to get the solder clean (for me) is to put the end of the wire in the pickle, rinse it then snip of tiny pieces into a folded piece of paper that i use to put the solder snippets in a small cup. Then use flux on a small paintbrush to mix around and pick up the tiny pieces and put them on the prepared and fluxed solder area.
Homemade twisted wire absorb a lot of solder, so I usually have no problems with it spilling to the front side.

Welcome, and good luck!

/Andreas

[Tabby66]

Very interesting reply Andreas, thank you