Pumping up the heat.

Meanwhile, the amount of Goldsmithing 'stuff' in our house is growing steadily. Having learned the basics on how to solder, we acquired the tools to practice soldering at home. 'We' meaning my wife and me, not the royal we ;-)

Some items come from DeZilverWinkel, others (mainly the burner) from AliExpress. The lot is shown here on my workbench - AKA the ceramic kitchen stove. I Must have the most understanding wife in the whole wide world. I Love her!

These are the copper rings I soldered at GoldenArtDesign. I Showed them before in the topic One ring leads to another.

Eventually, I found this inspiration for my solderingproject. Or rather, my lovely wife did. She is very good at finding things, and I shamelessly stole this idea.

First step is to find out the wire size and ring diameter. After some experimenting, I decided to use 2mm Alpaca wire, wound around a 6mm dowel.

Last week, I continued the project by making 36 rings from 1 meter of wire, that should give me 100mm of finished chain.

So today was the day to practice soldering at home. A Quick refresh on how to solder... and on we go! (Book: Vakgeheimen van het sieraden maken, Stephen o'Keeffe.)

Here is the first ring soldered at home:

After a while, I end up with an assortment of soldered rings.

After a soak in Vitrex (Alkaline solution), the rings look like this:

A Grand assortment of rings that have either:
- Too much solder or too little solder.
- Too much flux or too little flux.
- Too much heat, or not enough heat applied.

So, I decide that I need to work on my skills some more :-)

That, and replace the Borax flux with the "flux h" paste.

Finally, after some more practice and using the new flux, I ended up with a leather-and-alpaca bracelet that doesn't look too shabby.

I Even may consider wearing it from time to time!