Silversmithing Techniques
Preface
I have learnt a lot of my silversmithing skills though research . I learn from watching others on YouTube or reading articles online of how people preform different techniques. I have also learnt from reading books that go over the skills required to make jewellery. Most importantly I have learnt through trial and error, experimenting with every new concept. By explaining my understanding of skills I have a record of my knowledge and ability of what I can do.
Overview
The Techniques And There Explination
Sand Casting
Sand casting is a process that can allow you to make any shape. Instead of starting with a solid block of metal and spending a long time trying to remove the hard metal, with sand casting you can make a wax former. Wax is easy to carve and form the shape you want. Then by compacting the sand around the wax form and then removing the wax from the sand you create a negative space that can be filled with metal of your choice. You may have to add air holes to allow air and expanding gases to freely escape the mould.
Sweat Soldering
Sweat soldering is the two-stage process. The use of sweat soldering is to make a clean joint and to use on solder joints that are too hard to reach traditionally. First apply the soldered to surface 1 and heat until the solder flows over the whole surface. Then the second stage is to flux the whole piece and place surface 2 on top of surface 1 and heat up until the solder begins to "sweat" and forms a bond between the two surfaces. There is less clean-up required for this process compared to regular soldering
Annealing / Work Hardning
Annealing and work hardening comes hands and hands. When a piece of precious metal is bent or worked it gradually gets harder and stiffer and therefore more brittle. When metal is brittle it is more susceptible to cracking, which is obviously not a good thing. The way of dealing with this is by "annealing" . To anneal you gently heat the piece until a subtle red glow then leave it cool down. By doing this you are softening the metal so it can be worked again.
Silver Chain
To make a Cuban chain start with jump rings. Solder half of them closed and leave the other half open. Then use an open link to secure 2 of the closed links together. To get the solder into the joint I use the soldering vice to hold the jump ring in place. Then I heat a piece of solder until it balls up. I then put a cold soldering pick into the bead and the solder sticks to the pic then I heat the jump ring, once up to temperature I use the pick to place the piece of solder into the joint until it flows. Once you have the desired length of chain. You can start to twist the chain slowly. Because the links will be bending they will slowly start to work harden, this will require you to keep reannealing throughout the process. Slowly the chain will become flat. The links will probably break but you can just re-solder them. I have had problems with the chain not sitting 100% flat, but I think this is to do with the thickness of the jump rings I used.
Jumprings
You can use a rod of your desired size and wrap wire around it to make jump rings. But I have a simple device that allows you to easily make various sizes of jump rings. Then using a saw to cut down one side of the wire tube, you will get perfect jump rings.
Wire
There are several ways to make wire. The one I used is too cast a rod of metal and then pull it through a draw plate where the holes get gradually smaller and smaller, this causes the wire to get thinner and longer. You can stop at any point to get the desired gauge of wire.
