Jewellery Pickle

Posted on May 15, 2012 by mark

Working with Jewellery Pickle
Working with metal is a rewarding and creative job or hobby. A fair amount of patience, artistic flair and a steady hand are needed in order to make the perfect piece. When working with fine metals and making jewellery, you will be doing a lot of soldering, fusing your perfect design together to make the shapes and spheres you desire.

Metal smiths and jewellery makers will need to use some sort of acidic solution, to help them remove oxides and stubborn tarnish, from the surface of precious metals that have been heated, soldered, casted or annealed.

Jewellery Pickle is a proprietary gentle acidic formulation, designed specifically for use with precious metals and soft metals like silver, which tarnish, flux and oxidize easily after being worked with. The solution is made up of a combination of nitric acid, sulphuric acid and sparex, which is incredibly acidic and will need to keep in a secure container, safely out of reach of harm.

During use the formula also needs to be kept warm using something like the.A slow cooker, crock pot or coffee pot would work very well in keeping the Jewellery Pickle at the right temperature to work with. It goes without saying that if you have up-cycled a kitchen appliance, it cannot be reintegrated into the kitchen ever again for food use, as the build up on the inside of the container will be extremely toxic.

You will also need a pair of copper tongs to handle your metal items, and to dip them in and out of the warm solution.

Copper is the best metal to use for dipping metal items into the pickle, as it won’t contaminate the pickle solution, so you will be able to keep it clean, and be able to continue using it for a long time. If you don’t keep your pickle mixture clean, it will hinder the soldering process, and possibly even permanently contaminate your item of metal jewellery.

Working with jewellery pickle takes some very careful practice; the solution is highly acidic and it has been
heated. Take great care not to just drop or throw your metal item into the solution. Lower it slowly, use the copper tongs and be careful not to let the solution splash out of the pot.

Always make sure that you wear protective clothing and protective eye and hand gear, such as goggles, gloves and an apron, when working with acids and pickle solutions.

click here to get your slow cooker and safty pickle

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Jewellery making ideas

Posted on January 3, 2012 by mark

Jewellery making ideas I always have a pen and pad with me so if anything pops in to my head I just put it down in to my note pad

I get most of my jewellery making ideas wile I’m listening to music I want to get all the emotion in to the jewellery

making jewellery listing to my ipod

When I come up with a new design I don’t let doubt hold me back. What I mean by that is if I think I can’t make it.

Then I wouldn’t have made half of the stuff I have done. I design first then work out how to make it afterwards. Sometimes you will have to change the design a bit, but no artist has ever made something start to finish and not had to change something. If you don’t change something your not being creative enough.

The Key Ingredient for guaranteed Jewellery making ideas success.

Good music that gets you going, anything that makes you get up and dance or get you going like ‘yeah I don’t care what people think’ or makes you say ‘yeah I love this song turn it up’

A pen and a old note pad

It’s as easy as that. Now go and have fun you crazy kids

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Why Silver is a good metal to work in, is it ok to use scrap?

Posted on October 11, 2011 by mark

People ask me ‘Why is silver a good metal to work with?’.

Personally I love the look of silver it has a lighter colour than platinum and white gold it looks brilliant for fashionable pieces.

It’s one of the easiest to work with when you know what you are doing, bending it into the shape you want is just a dream and you don’t need a high fierce heat to get the solder to run

People ask me is it a good idea to use old or scrap bits of jewellery to melt up and reuse this is a brilliant idea but you do have to do a lot of things first

Cut out all your solder joints. You can find these by warming the metal up till it oxidizes and the metal will go black and the solder will be a lighter colour, greyish
in silver

Don’t forget when warming the metal up get it to a cherry red anything past that and it will melt before you want it to

After you have cut the solder out put it into a crucible warm it slightly and dab your borax cone into it and then melt the whole lot up.

Poor it in to the Shape you want or leave it but as soon as it’s solid quench it in your pickle (sulphuric acid,safety acid, alum) or water then pickle

Then you have to hammer it this coincides the metal and makes it better to work with keep annealing your metal it’s not like fresh metal you will need to anneal it more but the saving you make it’s worth the extra time

Hope that helps you guys feel free to leave a comment

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Casting

Posted on September 19, 2011 by mark

Casting weight table wax to silver and so on…
Casting are normally 5% smaller than the master, it doesn’t normally make any difrance but you can do it in some cases ie; If you make a ring it will shrink one size so make your master one size bigger.

When pricing up, find out how much casting charge is, Metal Moulds and find out how much the moulds are for each size.

Ensure you find out how much they will charge postage do not forget to put that in with your pricing, unless you are able to pick it up.

If you don’t put your own sprew on ur master they will charge you for putting one on.

Picture of a master with sprew


Alway imagine the hot metal runing in to your casting like water, if it has to go back on it’s self it doesn’t cast that well and your chance of pit holes increases.

I use Abt for my castings you can find them at http://www.abtdesign.co.uk/

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how to create a ring

Posted on September 7, 2011 by mark

Making a silver flower ring

I went to the ijl show (international jewellery london show) found this onyx flower and this is how I made it in to a ring

1st thing I done was bend up some 2 mm round silver wire to finger size M I made it so it had a point because I wanted it to have a vine look about it

Then soldered the join

The next step was to tap the ring round

Then I tapped it flat

I cut the excess metal off the bottom of the ring and made it into more of a pointy shape and filed then buffed into a smoother shape

With the saw frame I found the centre of the ring on the opposite side to the point all I done was marked the centre by putting a very small cut

There’s a hole in the flower which takes 1 mm round wire and where my marked the centre with the saw frame I drilled a 1 mm hole to a deepness of 1 mm

Then soldered than 1 mm wire into the ring. using more 1 mm silver wire I cut 6 pieces to the length of each leaf and soldered them to a place of Silver tube which takes the 1 mm wire into the tube

I placed the flower onto the 1 mm post then put the Silver tube onto the post to and tapped the silver post down over the tube to keep it secure

The next step was to bend down the silver rods that went across the flower

Then I cut the rods down to a size that I thought looked good then used a paper disc to smooth them down so they wouldn’t get court on any clothing

I polished it using a brush with a bit of green compound then a stitch mop also with green compound. The final thing I had to do was to put a little bit of glue on the stone to give it extra strength as this is a unique shaped stone. With stones like these it’s hard to make them 100% secure.


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