26.4.09

Sweat soldering

Last Sunday, I took my third soldering class and things finally clicked. The first class was basics - soldering closed jump rings and I wasn't sure it was for me. The second class was about rings, I liked that was and I actually wear the rings I made.

This class was about soldered pendants and I'm very pleased with the results. I finished the pendant with the houses in class - completely. All soldering, polishing, patina-ing and polishing was done. The second pendant - mountains and cloud (which I drew and cut out and shaped all by myself) was mostly finished in class.
The third pendant, though, gave me trouble. Nothing would stick together and then I lost the dot and there wasn't enough time in class to start over. So, I dug out all my equipment this morning and it came together beautifully. The dot stuck, the jump ring behaved, I aged everything in liver of sulphur and polished.
The picture isn't doing the pendants justice - you can't see the patina very well. But I'm no pro when it comes to photography even though I did this with my new, rather nice camera. Okay, so I've had the camera for over a year and never used it (I'm very resistant to new things), but now that I've tried it, I'll use it again. And I'll be soldering again, too, even though my set up is very inconvenient.

8 comments:

Anonymous said...

You did a great job! I like those!

Doris said...

Thank you, Marilee!

Katie B said...

Those are nice!!
Are you still getting stamps to use for your pendants?
Boy -- you are so multi-faceted!
I think you are so talented!

Beady Zoo said...

Your pendants are lovely! ... so detailed and textured. Good job!

abeadlady said...

Is there anything you can't do, woman??? Seriously, those are terrific. Sure wish you lived closer to me. Then we could do things together.

Doris said...

Thank you, Katie,
These pendants didn't use stamps, the texture is done with hammers.
And I like "multi-faceted" much better than what I was thinking: unfocused :-)

Doris said...

Thank you, Kathy,
I surprised myself here.

Doris said...

Thank you, Arline.
Yes, there are plenty of things I cannot do. And I wish we lived closer together, too. We could get each other into trouble!