A Tale of Two Soldering Blocks

I have a new soldering block.

My old soldering block, pictured below on the left, has seen me through a lot. In fact, it's as good as the only block I've ever used when I've soldered away from the class environment. And it had got to the stage where to find a small patch of level surface involved balancing the block on its side and really wasn't ideal, to put it mildly.




I've always used powder flux and when this is heated it becomes molten. Then it hardens to an almost glass-like quality, as you might be able to see in the photograph. It also becomes sticky and hardens rapidly as soon as the heat is removed, and can quite easily hold the work being soldered onto the soldering block. This is, to put it mildly, far from ideal when you've finished the soldering part.

Eventually I was given the handy hint of reheating the area very slightly, just enough to make the flux molten again, and then lift the work off without any resistance. But until then I used to pull until the silver came free, and it normally came free with a small piece of the soldering block.

So my old block is a mixture of miniature valleys of missing block and mountains of glass-like flux. It's still usable and will be used, but for delicate, more precise work, having a smooth soldering surface feels like the most extravagant indulgence and I'm still enjoying the clean and smooth expanses, and doing my best not to create any more landforms than I'm sure I inevitably will, however careful I am.

Do leave a comment or get in touch if you've any hints to share about dealing with soldering blocks - I've love to read them.

Shopping and silver on the radio

How busy is this December? And just how slow is the internet on a December evening? I have a feeling that come dusk, everyone goes on the net and hunts furiously for Christmas gifts for several hours, pausing only to sleep, go to the shops, and then repeat the same routine...

I went out yesterday to the shops, literally fought my way across a Tesco Extra (or was it an Express? I'm never sure which is which) to find one small item, fought my way back again to the self-serve tills to the strains of Jona Lewie's Stop the Cavalry, queued, noticed a monitor informing anyone who cared to look that the same self-serve tills had experienced slightly over 1,600 customers that day so far (it was around 1.30pm), paid for my solitary item, and legged it, breathing gulps of fresh cool (okay, cold) air as I left the place.

Every year I say I'll Christmas shop in June, every year I don't quite manage that...ahem.

But my main reason for this post (no, I'm not just using up bandwidth to state the obvious, that the shops are busy in December) is I caught the end of an interesting show about silver and silversmithing on the radio today, and thought it worth sharing the details as it's on iplayer, but only for a week.

Hope you enjoy a listen, and hope your Christmas shopping is going, well, easily...!

(no photo - the net is too slow!!)

Busy, busy, busy

It's been a quiet month online for me so far... life has a habit of getting in the way and I've also been creating some jewellery for a special occasion that still needs to be mostly kept under wraps for now. I've also been experiencing the joys of the cold season; and by 'cold' I don't really mean only the weather...

Anyway, here's a photo of just one tiny (unpickled) part of what I've been making in my workshop.

It's been a very intense period of solder, flux, and a lot of butane gas, but I'm looking forward to sharing photos of the finished item(s) very soon.

Multimedia here I come...?

In late April 2011 the price of silver hit £940.67 per kilo, double what it had been six months beforehand. When I started making silver jewellery, a little over ten years ago, bullion cost was around £100 a kilo. At the time of typing this, it's just over £600 a kilo (check out up to date prices here). It's amazing to think back to it being so 'cheap' (relatively, of course). Even then, we were still taught to treat silver as the precious commodity it is, saving offcuts to reuse, and even collecting up sweepings, the tiny shavings created when you saw a piece of silver up. But, now, with the price so high, I'm increasingly nervous of it. And, with that nervousness, the joy of experimenting and creating has decreased a little.

I've been making jewellery with other materials for a while now, just as experiments, and I've been thinking about even more things I could try. I can't imagine turning my back on silver completely; I love it too much and know it too well. But, as the cost of pretty much everything increases dramatically, I think it's fair enough to be more careful with how we use many resources.

Copper, polymer clay, semi-precious stones, wood...

So far, I've experimented with copper (see here and here), and polymer clay (see here, here and here), and have always used beads in my jewellery, combined with silver, both glass and semi-precious.

Next on my list is to use the copper clay that I bought last year, expand my experiments with polymer clay, and also look to fabric and thread, (am fascinated by the idea of Kumihimo braiding already), check out wood and stone, do more with beads, of all types, and try approaching jewellery in a more multimedia-orientated way. I was also pretty inspired by this book about paper jewellery. The idea of combining different materials and techniques with still using silver (just perhaps less of it) really appeals to me.

How about you? Has the cost of materials involved in what you make, whatever it is, altered the way you use it and made you start to consider how you can expand on what you know and do, and perhaps try alternative materials? I'd love to hear, not least to get a little more inspiration!

Hope you're having a good weekend. It's amazingly un-snowy where I am...but the rest of the UK seems to be under snow or water. Hope it's okay wherever you are.

Copper in Autumn

Last weekend I spent a few hours with a friend in her workshop, tucked away against the chill weather outside, surrounded by silver, copper, polishers, rolling machines, and enough tools to make anyone who makes metal jewellery rather happy.

Copper ring, with a rolled pattern. Like a leopard's spots, or a honeycomb.

We chatted about the price of silver (slightly decreased), the fact I've most definitely missed the final posting date for the Diamond Jubilee hallmark (boo), and that assay offices will now hallmark silver and gold even if they're attached to metals such as copper, something they didn't previously do (interesting).

Another ring through the rolling mill. This time the pattern is more abstract.

We drank a lot of tea, finished off a jar of hot chocolate, and ate too many biscuits and chocolates (very naughty in a workshop, I know).

Oh, and we also made some jewellery.

More roller textured copper, a little crown-like...

Crown-like also, but in a slightly more-committed curvy-way.

Unfortunately, I don't have any photos of the beautiful silver locket my friend finished, nor of the silver and copper owl she was working on, but I have included a few snaps of the four copper rings I made, and of the copper owl I did some work on (and no, we didn't converse beforehand, just coincidentally were both working on owls...), and which may well turn into a brooch. Or a pendant. Hmm...

The two crowns fit together, just, and make a wider ring.

Nothing I started is finished yet, the rings needing some more filing and polishing, and  the owl either needing more work on the detail, or me discarding it as a prototype or experiment.

A brooch in waiting. Or a pendant. Or just a copper owl.

But, still, not a bad way to spend a Saturday in autumn at all.

It's (been) oh so quiet . . .

. . . on my blog of late. I'd fallen into a combination of busy, busy, busy in the non-blog world and a curious blogger's-block which meant that every time I sat down to compose a post I either couldn't think of a word to type or couldn't find a photo I wanted to share.

So I stayed quiet, until now. The dust in the non-blog environment is starting to settle a little, and that has helped free my mind also.

Like the spring after the winter, I feel I'm coming back to life.

So, what have I been doing? Well, I've moved house; nearly found everything I misplaced while moving house (including smithing tools!); finished a long and arduous Open University course; nearly finished a very long-standing silversmithing project; and I've got over the long, cold winter as it has melted into a late spring which is as warm as summer . . . until it turned cold again *sigh*

Something else I've been doing, after discovering where my silver had disappeared to, is a bit of jewellery making. Here are a few rings I've finished making, which gave a nice sense of satisfaction after such a time away from things, and also provides something for me to show you . . .