Tuesday's Tip By LjBjewelry

Soldering

For those who follow my art work or my social networks know that I am a self taught metalsmith. I am asked many times what techniques I use or how I create certain pieces. Not to long ago I started creating tutorials but at first I was very intimidated.  Even with a few tutorials under my belt I am still a little intimidated and definitely camera shy.

Being self taught and not having a professional instruction in the immense world of silversmithing, I didn't think anyone would take me seriously. However one thing I have learned after many trial and errors is you must  "find what works for you" I like experimenting in many ways and trying new things. This will always help improve your skills and you will find what works better for you.

I do have some pdf tutorials and one video tutorial already available on my website, if you are interested you can find them here. TUTORIALS

As I become a little more confident in creating tutorials, I thought I would start offering mini freebie tutorials here on my blog once a month on the last Tuesday of every month.  Hopefully this will help me with my camera shyness. I will keep my fingers crossed I can step up to the plate and manage one video a month. As we all know, so much is going on in the world today that can be quite distracting and worrisome.  So here is my first Tuesday's Tip. In this little video I demonstrate how I solder. I don't do anything special, I just found what works for me.

I work with wire solder, I do not cut up snippets and place them on my work. I just got very tired of the snippets always moving around or flying off to some other dimension and having to cut more snippets to place on my work to have them disappear but again. I hold the solder wire, I keep my torch moving in circular movements, and I keep the bushy part of the flame over my piece to heat it up evenly. Never touch your piece with the blue cone of the flame because this will burn your flux, you also risk melting your piece and it will also create fire scale. When the flux goes from frosty color to transparent that is when you can start touching your solder seam with the solder wire. If your piece is heated up evenly,  and you touch your solder seam with the solder wire, the solder will flow very easily and be drawn all along the seam like magic. If your piece is not heated up evenly it will not work. If you go in too early to touch the solder seam with your wire, your solder will ball up on the end and then you risk having to much solder on your work and adding on more clean up time afterwards. 

I hope you find the video helpful, if you have any questions feel free to contact me or leave a comment below. May your solder always flow like magic!!

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