Have you matted the end of the pusher either by whacking an old file on it a few times or banging it into some coarse wet & dry on a bench block?
Have you matted the end of the pusher either by whacking an old file on it a few times or banging it into some coarse wet & dry on a bench block?
Hi Susie,
I might be wrong, having not actually started my project yet (life really does get in the way of jewellery making sometimes!), but I'm going to start with 0.5mm walled tubing. I was dubious myself, but I've watched a few tutorials that advise what you're looking for is for the diameter of the stone to be half way between the internal and external diameters of the tubing; and for the external diameter of the tube to be no more than 0.6mm bigger than the diameter of the stone.
So say if you had a 4.5mm stone, you could use tubing with internal diameter of 4mm and external diameter of 5mm, which would make the full wall thickness of the tube 0.5mm, and would give you 0.25mm of wall to push over after its been burred - which should be okay.
Faith
Yes that makes sense. Thanks Faith.
Well I hope it worked for you Lydia. I hate to give duff advice. Dennis.
Oh deary dear....
Well I had a jewellery day today. Burred my tube with a ball burr, then a setting burr (this was for the faceted stone). The burs measured 0.05 of a mil smaller than my stone but with a bit of a wiggle my stone fit snuggly. Made a ring, sawed out a tube sized gap in the ring, filed the ends concave and soldered the tube in. Soldered it really really seriously wonky . I've never soldered a setting "into" a shank before, as opposed to "onto" a fully round shank, and my baby butane torch didn't put out enough heat to flow both solder joins at once, hence I did them one at a time. Now however, I have no idea how I might get it hot enough to true it, or get it off altogether to try again
For this evening I have solved this problem in the only way I know how - pub.
Pesky pesky tube!
Faith
Last edited by Faith; 01-10-2016 at 11:36 PM.
Getting heads and shanks perfectly aligned for soldering is a fiddle - make no mistake. And the more perfectly you align them the more an infernal law tends to operate that means they move out of alignment at the critical moment.
To discourage the infernal law from operating you really need to hold things in position so that their tendency to move out of alignment will be removed or reduced. Binding wire is one option (fiddly and tedious for rings); another is titanium soldering clamps; yet another is head/shank tweezers, which can also be fiddly to set up but which are probably the firmest way out of the three of securing head and shank together immovably.
In the present case, you could have a go at remelting the solder and giving the setting a nudge. If you need to have more than one or two goes to achieve the desired alignment you may blow out too much of the old solder and have to start again; or you may inadvertently melt your setting.
I'd be inclined to try once or twice at melting the old solder and repositioning, and if you fail to improve things by then to desolder the setting completely, pickle it and the shank thoroughly, reposition with new solder using one of the holding methods I've described, and have a fresh go - preferably not immediately after your return from the pub, or you may need to head off down there again for liquid consolation.
Last edited by Aurarius; 01-10-2016 at 11:57 PM.
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