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Post by connrock on Nov 5, 2014 10:36:09 GMT -5
I made these before I made the little copper cup and are the reason I took a break and made the cup! LOL I never tried making rings like these before and it shows! LOL All bracelets are 5/8" wide,,, ,,,,and the infamous rings,,, It's a good thing I don't try to sell this stuff! LOL connrock
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jamesp
Cave Dweller
Member since October 2012
Posts: 36,155
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Post by jamesp on Nov 5, 2014 18:29:00 GMT -5
Are those rings out of pipe ? that stuff will sell here in Atlanta in a jiffy.
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Post by connrock on Nov 6, 2014 8:18:41 GMT -5
James,,,,all of the rings were totally fabricated.I was trying to learn how to either copper solder or silver solder the ring joints together and found that it wasn't easy at all for me to do. The narrow ring almost got me throwing things! I stripped some 14 gauge electrical wire,straightened it,twisted it,annealed it,hammered it flat trying to keep it about the same width,annealed it again and tried to get it to lay flat. I cut 2 strips of copper plate about the same thickness of the flattened 14 gauge wire,annealed them and made them as flat as possible. I laid the 2 strips of copper sheet along side the twisted/flattened wire and used copper solder to solder them together. My 1st attempt at soldering the 3 pieces together was a disaster,,,,I cut about 50 tiny pieces of annealed/flattened copper solder and laid them carefully along side the mating pieces and tried soldering them together! This didn't go well so I tried "flooding" the joints with copper solder figuring I could clean up unwanted solder later on.
After that part of the soldering fiasco was over,,,,I was shooting for a size 9-10 ring so I cut the ends to the right length and squared them off as close as possible to being an air tight joint. I formed the ring on a ring mandrel and got the joint as close as possible not wanting to see ANY light through the joint. Not wanting to un-solder any previous pieces I used Easy silver solder to solder the ring joint together. The whole ring came out a disaster,even after a lot of "clean-up", as you can see all of the solder in the photo.
The copper solder is an odd beast,,,sometimes it comes out a fairly good color match and other times it turns silver and I don't know why or what I'm doing wrong? LOL Some have suggested re-heating it to get the color match back but I've tried that and it didn't work for me.I've tried using it "as is", with Handy silver solder flux and brazing flux too and that didn't work either!
This is when I took a break from jewelery and made the little cup! LOL Funny thing is,,,the cup was a lot harder to do but came out a lot better then any of the rings! Go figure??? LOL
Maybe I should take a trip to Atlanta and sell somethin before I run out of copper??? LOL connrock
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Post by pghram on Nov 6, 2014 13:22:27 GMT -5
Those are really lookig good.
Rich
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Post by snowmom on Nov 7, 2014 7:04:48 GMT -5
they'd sell in a lot of places, real quick! I love them!
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