ScrapHappy February 2023

Back to silver scrap this month

One of the things that happens with me more often that I would like, is soldering fail.

I prefer to make many of my items in small batches; I find that it is a benefit in that it speeds up the process and makes sure that I get in the zone and creates some useful muscle memory. And of course, when I have an item that needs to be consistent, then making all the elements in one go is always sensible.

I sold my oyster necklace in one of my pre-Christmas fairs, and as it’s a piece I love I made another and also a variant – the broad bean 😉

The BroadBean necklace

Both begin life as recycled sterling silver wire that I coil into loops before soldering closed into rings. Soldering fails occur for me when a) the joint isn’t tightly closed before heating or b) I burn the solder, by either having insufficient flux or by missing the Goldilocks zone and heating it too long and slow / or too fast and hot.

This usually leaves me with a small piece of wire that’s been contaminated with solder at either end, and often a bit melty. I always trim off the part with the solder and put that into my dirty scrap box to send off for refining, and the clean bit of wire goes in my personal scrap pot for me to melt down for use elsewhere. But, because these loops are larger than usual I had enough within them to create these raindrop earrings for one of my regulars.

Here’s the process:

Curving the wire round my bail making pliers to a pleasing teardrop shape, I then saw through the point and replace.

I was able to make 10 of these from 4 failed links.

I line them up on my solder block (see that tiny bit of red below the points? that’s a chip of my hard solder. I colour each solder type differently, so that I can see it clearly on the block and also identify which solder it is when I drop it 😉 )

Then I pickle them to remove the oxides, and file the points smooth with my teeny needle files.

Finally I curve them with my doming punches and send them for a tumble in Betty-The-Barrel before sorting into pairs and making these earrings, which have cherry quartz – a form of dyed glass bead – left over from a batch I ordered at a different customer’s request for a specific commission. I shared these over on my instagram account, where they gained some love, so I’ve listed them in my shop . I enjoyed making them and will add a few to the range in different gemstones – I think labradorite will look particularly fabulous with the link to raindrops

ScrapHappy is open to anyone using up scraps of anything – no new materials.

It can be a quilt block, pincushion, bag or hat, socks or a sculpture. Anything made of genuine scraps is eligible. If your scrap collection is out of control and you’d like to turn them into something beautiful or useful instead of leaving them to collect dust in the cupboard, why not join us on the 15th of each month?

Email Kate at the address on her Contact Me page. You can also contact Gun via her blog to join.

Here are the links for everyone who joins ScrapHappy on occasion.

Kate, Gun, Eva, Sue, Lynda,
Birthe, Turid, Susan, Cathy,  Tracy, 
Jan, Moira, Sandra, Chris, Alys,
Claire, Jean, Jon, Dawn, Jule, Gwen,
Sunny, Kjerstin, Sue L, Vera, Edith
Nanette, Ann, Dawn 2, Carol, Preeti, Debbierose, Nóilin, Viv, Karrin, Amo and Alissa   

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