Everyone loves customised gifts. Have you ever thought of customising a pair of silver earrings for your friend? It may sound a little complicated and you may think that it is better to rather buy a pair of earrings for your friend instead of doing so much work.
But once you will know how to do it, it will be very easy for you and you will get a different kind of satisfaction gifting your friend something which you have made yourself.
Tools required for soldering silver jewellery: –
- Sterling silver wire
- A torch
- Soldering board
- Silver solder
- Lighter
- Tweezers
- Silver prep
- Steel block
- Hammer
- Boric acid
- Denatured alcohol
There are jewellery soldering kits also available in the market or online and they have all the tools which are required for soldering jewellery.
In case, you do not have any of the above mentioned tools then you can consider buying a kit but if you have few tools, then you can buy the other tools separately.
Steps to solder jewellery: –
- Cut the solder into tiny pieces- Now that you have all the tools which are required, put everything out and then cut the solder into small pieces.
- Place the parts together- Place the silver rings or wire and then push the parts which you want to solder until they touch each other. You can also use a tweezer for this.
- Join the parts together- Take some water with flux and make a watery paste. Now take a paint brush and apply flux on the parts you want to solder.
- Place solder pieces on fluxed solder seams- With the help of a tweezer, take a solder piece and place it on the fluxed solder seams.
- Check everything- Before moving ahead, check that everything is at the place where you want it to be.
- Get your torch- Now take a torch and make sure it is on high as it should be hot enough so that it can melt silver solder.
- Clear the space- Before turning the torch on, make sure the space around you is clear.
- Heat from a distance- Make sure that you are at a safe distance while heating the metal. Your flux should not be wet as it can boil when you start heating.
- Use tweezers to reposition the solder- In case, your solder leaps off during heating then you can reposition it with a tweezer.
The flux will start becoming hard after its dry and this will be stage one. After this, the flux will be clear and start melting.
If you notice that one side of the piece is hot and the other side is not hot, you should gently make sure that all the pieces of silver are heated evenly.
You can move the flame closer to apply more heat to the metal once the flux becomes clear. Push the pieces of silver together in case they are apart while the solder is melted.
Now you can follow the same steps for the other earring. Once the solder seams have flowed, turn the torch off and allow them to cool.
You can use a tweezer to put them in copper wire and then drop them in the pickle.
Take out the metal once it becomes silver and then wash it and have a look at it. Do not worry if the solder is not in a flow, you can always add more solder and try to reflow once more.
Now when you are satisfied with the pair of solder earrings you have, you can use a sandpaper to make them smoother. You can also use a hammer to make the earring flat.
Now that you are happy with how your earrings look, you can attach them to smaller rings with help of hook.
Make sure that you twist the ring apart and not pull them as pulling them can deform it and it is not easy to make them round again. You are done once the hook is attached.
You can choose your choice of box and gift it to your friend or a loved one. You can also use them for yourself.
In case you wish to use post for your earrings, you will have to solder them first before polishing them. Hold the post with the tweezers and put a piece of solder wherever you want the post to be.
Now heat the solder and place the post on top of the solder. The solder will itself attach the post with the metal.
It is up to you if you want to experiment with different shapes and solder them together.
In case you are not sure about the process, you can definitely watch some videos online which will help you in understanding the whole process better.
You can make so many different types of jewellery and create interesting designs and solder them together.
It is a perfect gifting option for someone you love and it will have your personalised touch as well. Once you are an expert in this, you can make all your jewellery buy yourself and create something new every time.
Solder jewellery is more well-made than the wire jewellery. Solder jewellery cannot be pulled apart except when it is broken. So it is better to learn the way to solder jewellery and make it yourself.
You can use soldering for making earrings, necklaces, bracelets and anything you want to. Anyone can solder jewellery if they have the tools.
Even a beginner can solder jewellery. But it is advisable to watch some tutorials first if you are a beginner before you start soldering. It is important that you follow all the steps and tips and be careful while soldering jewellery specially if you are a beginner.
In case, you have a few tools but not sure about the other ones, then you can also take a help of a local store or someone who is more experienced as having good quality tools are also very important for the success of this project.
