Friday, May 30, 2008

Soldered Necklace Charm, music notes





I finished another soldered necklace charm. If you look back to previous posts, you'll see that i made my list of things i've learned about soldering. I like to think i'm somewhat better now than i was then: lets review that list:

1. It is important to burnish down the copper tape or it will just peel back and crispify and such I still have some problems with the tape not being completely smooth and having some small divets and such, but it never peels and crispifies anymore :)

2. The blow torch is too strong. It turns the tape into a burnt, discoloured crisp and makes the glass smoky. My soldering iron is working MUCH better. Far better controlled.

3. It is important to not only wrap the two pieces with copper tape individually, but to also wrap them together with another layer. Otherwise they are too difficult to hold with pliers, they move when you don't want them to and the image inside gets burnt to a crisp. This is working so much better, and i can easily hold it with pliers now. I have also discovered that if you want to add a jump ring, it is MUCH easier to tape it on BEFORE soldering, not after. Previous projects went wrong from insufficiently planning ahead for this, but with this one's planning it went well.

4. 'Soldering irons' that cost 2.50 are not sufficient. A glue gun gets hotter than that piece of crap :p The soldering iron gets maybe a little too hot, but generally pretty good.

I am pleased with how this is progressing.

3 comments:

Judy said...

They look great to me!

Leah said...

great work with the soldering!

Kristen Robinson said...

These are divine little treasures!
XOX
Kristen