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
How do you move from working in silver to more expensive metals? Do you need to buy new sets of tools etc? I would like to set more expensive gemstones but worry that silver is too soft, and therefore I’m thinking about other metals, but don’t know where to start.
hi i use the same tools for silver gold and platinum.i only replace my tool when they are worn out like files and such
and silvers fine with expense gem stones you can get silver rings with diamonds i wouldn’t worry to much i bet tiffanys dont worry about it lol