Of torches and lemonade

On the torch front, yesterday I went to Home Depot and bought a MAPP gas + oxygen torch, mostly because the tanks were in a handy package with the hose and torch and striker -- and it didn't cost too much. I've never heard of MAPP gas much less worked with it. The good news is that it's way hot enough for everything I wanted to do. Much silver has been reticulated this afternoon, to my great satisfaction. On the downside, it's a two-tank deal, which is a bit of a pain. Even more of a down-side, when the gas is burning without oxygen it produces this extremely sooty smoke. It stops once you add sufficient oxygen, but yech. All the spiderwebs on my kitchen ceiling, which had previously been invisible, are now black. I'm trying to think of it as the decorating equivalent of liver of sulfur.

Here are some other pieces I finished at Peters Valley. All the bracelets are sterling silver. The first two were run through a corrugator before being formed with a mold in a hydraulic press. Of the nine pieces I made at PV, I think these are my favorites. The corrugation makes the silver look like it's ruffled, especially in the white bracelet. The patina on the other one blew me away - I've never gotten that many colors from liver of sulfur. As far as I know, it was just LoS in water - but the teacher kept it pre-mixed in a brown glass jar and we brushed it on cold. I've read a bunch of books on jewelry-making in the past year and many of them had "recipes" for using LoS, but none of them recommended keeping it in liquid form. I haven't tried it since I got home, but if this is the kind of patina cold application gives, I'm for it.

For the third bracelet, I fused silver wire to the silver sheet and then ran it through the rolling mill to flatten the wire before molding. The patina on this one isn't as striking - I think it's because this wasn't polished to a high shine like the other one. Finally, this pendant is the last thing I finished at jewelry camp. The stone is a quartz doublet: two layers of quartz with a thin layer of rose gold between. This started out as a way to salvage a mistake. I had domed the pac-man shaped circle, then decided I didn't like it and hammered it flat, which erased most of the texture and made it slightly lopsided. I put it aside and made another one for the piece I was working on. Later I was looking at the pieces I had left over and started playing with some bits of wire and the lopsided pac-man. Something about the arrangement clicked and, with a little extra texturing using a chasing tool, I had a new pendant -- which I actually like better than the original piece I had been trying to make when I made the mistake.

So the lesson for today is "Carry a big torch and make lemonade." Or something like that.

Size does matter

This afternoon I gathered up the pieces for several soldering tasks and headed off to the kitchen to assemble my small soldering station. Got out the ceramic board, the charcoal brick, the crappy flux (source of many of my soldering woes - better stuff is on order), assorted tweezers and picks, and set up the pickle pot (a tiny slow cooker). Oh yeah, and I got out my little butane "torch". It worked fine for soldering ends onto chain and soldering bezel wire closed and even sweat soldering a tiny peach onto some textured silver I brought home with me. Then I tried to remove a part I had soldered onto some copper incorrectly and, because I used hard solder originally, it took ages. Only slightly daunted, I tried to ball the ends of some heavy wire... and tried and tried. Total failure. The ends of the wire look a little mushy, that's it. Finally, I pulled over a stool, sat down, and decided to finish texturing a piece of silver I'd started reticulating at PV. I held the torch on that sucker for a good three minutes and only managed to get the thinnest corner red-hot, which isn't hot enough. Feh.

You know what this means, right? I have to buy a bigger torch. Normally, I would celebrate the opportunity to buy more tools, but a torch presents some problems. My studio is on the third floor, but I solder in the kitchen (first floor) because I like the fact that there are fire-proof surfaces to work on and a killer vent over the stove to deal with fumes. That's where I run the kiln for PMC and enameling, too. I don't really like the idea of having a tank of acetylene or propane on the third floor in what is essentially a spare bedroom. (No bed anymore, just acres of jewelry-making supplies.) Rick Marshall said it's actually illegal to have acetylene in the house. So what do I do? The garage is a shell with no electricity, so that's not an option. The basement is damp, moldy, and stinky, so that's definitely not an option. Time for some research. In the meanwhile, it's little tiny bits of easy solder for me. Feh.