What can I pickle?

[nammie]

I found an interesting article online which suggests protecting a stone/bead with wet paper when balling up the final end of wire to secure it in place. I immediately thought 'oooo, that would work with those pearls I bought because they were pretty'. My next thought was 'if I ball up Sterling wire I'm going to need to pickle it'. Having read Kwant's thread on pickling turtles I know some stones can be pickled, I'm guessing pearls do not fit in that group.

I suppose I have a few questions for the experts here:

What is safe to pickle?
Could I get away with just cleaning up the wire without pickling?
Do I use fine silver wire instead?
Will either of the last two options work given the rest of the piece is likely to need pickling after the wire its balled up anyway? !

My current plan is to use the pearls along with a bit of epoxy something. I'm only really picking brains for future reference.

Nammie

[Patstone]

Well I can only say from experience which in my case is limited. Garnets pickle and come out ok, so do Peridots.

[Dennis]

A secure way to fix single half drilled (one hole) pearls is to fix them onto a short wire spike backed by a shallow cup.

For the cup you will need a basic disk cutter and then dome the disks in a doming block. They need to be small enough to be just out of sight. It is also possible to create small disks by cutting thin slices from the right thickness of wire, using a chenier cutting guide(chenier cutter).

Once you have made a suitable cup and central spike all that remains is to glue the pearl on with two part epoxy such as Devcon 5 Minute. The epoxi is introduced into the hole with a saw blade or needle, but inevitably some air included will cause the pearl to keep popping up until the glue is stiff enough. Hence the need for rapid set.

Very small half drilled pearls, say 2.5mm or so, are usually secure enough glued to cups without wires.

Dennis.

[nammie]

Thank you Pat and Dennis. I'm not sure when I will graduate to garnets, I'm only a beginner.plus, I have to admit I.jnot really a faceted stone kind of girl. A friend was teasing me yesterday that I will stretch to a cabochon but only if pushed!

The pearl advice was useful but in this case I'm using fully drilled (the right term?) Ones like beads. I'm sorry of doing the same thing though, gluing then onto a short wire, and I remembered the advice about sawing a v into the end of th Ne wire.

Work has halted for tonight as my neighbours prefer me not to hammer to late but I'll see if I.jm not too embarrassed to post a pic when I'm done.

I'd love to go back and correct that terrible typing but my phone just won't let me, sorry

[Dennis]

Well, I have in my time mounted fully drilled beads like you say, but using very thin tubes instead of wire posts. This allows you to glue on the bead and then insert a short wire, also glued, with the end beaded to give a neat finish. Dennis.

[Patstone]

I thought I was an early riser but Dennis you are worse than me. You dont sleep too well either I presume.

Well, I have in my time mounted fully drilled beads like you say, but using very thin tubes instead of wire posts. This allows you to glue on the bead and then insert a short wire, also glued, with the end beaded to give a neat finish. Dennis.

[Dennis]

We're aiming for a twenty-four hour service here, Pat.

[Patstone]

It looks a bit that way doesnt it. I have been trying to get someone to start a chatbox, so that if we see someone on line at silly o'clock at least we know we can chat to someone.

We're aiming for a twenty-four hour service here, Pat.