Blog

Little Details Up Close

  • Post comments:6 Comments

I really love to use tiny little details to texture a piece. Why I don’t know. I should take a granulation class or do granulation in general because I would love it. Here is the up close and personal pics of a pendant as I place the solder snippets and little details on the piece. This is very time-consuming and takes a lot of patience. I have it down to a science. It’s all in the initial setup. Placing everything where you need it one at a time. Warm up the flux before hand so your tiny pieces are not jumping all over the place.

This Post Has 6 Comments

  1. Wild Prairie Silver February 9, 2012

    Boy, fire scale has always been a big problem for me. I have gotten much better at avoiding it but not eliminating it completely. With a piece like I am doing in the above photo I will patina it and the spaces will be darkened so I am not overly concerned. I have started to do two things to help eliminate fire scale….. one is depletion guilding ~ Heating the piece up several times and quenching and pickling to bring the fine silver to the top and then solder on your pieces ~ the second thing I have just started to do is to use Fine Silver, especially for a pendant that doesn’t need to be strong like a ring. I wish some teacher along the way would have told me to do this because Fine Silver is just awesome to work with. I tried for about a year to use Argentium and found it was too brittle in some circumstances and no always predictable either. Fine Silver is the ticket for me. I just happened to read that in some other jewelers post on Orchid and it was a light bulb moment! (thanks other jeweler ~ whoever you are.)

  2. sue danehy February 9, 2012

    What do you use to prevent firescale? When I use tiny pieces I end up with areas nearby that don’t get very clean and I can’t polish very well in between them. Any suggestion? Do you just use a blackening agent and ignore firescale ? I have always admired your little texture pieces!

  3. Melissa February 8, 2012

    I love your details. I have tried paste solder and it is great for little things, but I don’t care much for it. I love using the pallions because you do get more control.

    1. Wild Prairie Silver February 9, 2012

      I do love the pallions of solder also, but it might be because it’s all I know. Love to see other ways people do things.

  4. marty February 8, 2012

    Ever try paste solder for those little, itsy, bitsy pieces?

Leave a Reply