-How to Make Soldered Jewelry, Episode #8 - Soldered Jump Ring Chain

Hey there, I'm Aisha Fermanski with Everthine Jewelry. And I'm Lisa Niven-Kelley here for beeducation.com and we have come together in this Introduction to Soldering series to teach you all kinds of soldering stuff. And in this episode, we are gonna make a chain. Super fun and sometimes can be tedious. Let's be honest. So this was the first project that I was taught when I went to jewelry smithing school back in the day. Back in the day. Yeah, back in the day. And it's a great, great way to practice patience and this very kind of small work. Yes, patience was our number one in our golden rules. And remember, this is a series. If you haven't watched those beginning classes, jump on over there. We kind of walk you through to this point. But in there, we talk about the golden rules. The metal has to be touching, the metal has to be clean. You need to be patient and safety. Of course. In this class, we're gonna use a blazer torch because we need that small specific flame to solder these jump rings. A little pointy, yeah. And last but not least, take your time to close these jump rings. And if you need practice closing those jump rings, we have a couple classes to refer you to. We have the beginning chain mail class. Yeah, over on beeducation.com. It's a chain mail class, but for chain mail to succeed, your jump rings have to be super closed. So Colin goes over how to close jump rings really well. It's the first step. It's a really cool class. Or we have a product video on closing jump rings. But again, that's gonna be key is to get that nice and shut. Here I have the chain resting on the kiln brick. I have a T-pin just anchoring the chain down at the end so that if I need to pull or adjust any of the jump rings, it won't move too much. Cool. Yep, and then here on the charcoal block, I have teeny tiny, these are smaller than normal. Yeah, I see. Hard solder pallions. We're doing that because the kiln brick has all these little pock marks and holes in them. And these little pallions are so small. I feel like they're all just gonna fall in those holes. So that's why we're bringing that in. I use a Sharpie marker or felt marker to put a little dot on exactly where the seam is. Because the sterling silver, when the jump ring is closed, it's kind of hard to find the seam. And once we put the flux on, it's gonna be even more of a challenge. The second thing I've done is you'll notice here, you notice that every other link, I have them facing us, right? Like straight on. And then the ones that are adjacent on the back here, I have them all laying the same way. And I'm doing this because, and it's putzy, it's really putzy. It is putzy. Because once we flux and we start to heat stuff, most likely we're gonna lose track of where the seams are. But you know that all of these ones are right in front facing us. Yep, and all of these ones are pointing to the back. Good one. So, if you need to solder blind, you could. I'm gonna blindfold you and test. I think we'll start with just soldering this section. I'm not gonna go ahead and adjust the whole length of it. Let's just, let's do like one third and one third and one third. Okay. I think that'll be a good way to go about it. Let me show you the part where we just melt a pallion into a little sphere and pick it up with the solder pick. Yeah. Because that's a good thing to practice. I am gonna spray a little bit of flux on the solder. It's just gonna, it doesn't hurt and it always helps. All right, let's go for this one here. You just go for it, just hit it. See it? It's so tiny. And the reason we're showing it like this, because once we start pick soldering on the chain, we're not gonna be able to show you picking it up. We wanna be pretty zoomed in. So, we'll be doing that part of the lock now. I'm gonna start by applying some flux to that section of the chain. We can still see those Sharpie marks through the Yeah, that's cool. Cooper now, which is very helpful. You still love your little guy, though. I do. Mm-hmm. So, you want a really pointy torch for this. That T-pin is stealing some of my heat. There we go. Going back off camera to grab another little pallion. I do recommend, I imagine, doing this with fairly heavy-gauge jump rings. Yes, yes. What are these, 18-gauge ones? These are 18-gauge, mm-hmm. Six millimeter ID. Go in right up to the seam, and deliver that little solder. Did you see that one went to the right? Mm-hmm. So, let's do it again. You really have to concentrate on not melting the one next to it. You'll notice, too, I can't talk while I deliver the solder. It's, this is very precise work. And she's also bracing her hand, what you guys can't see, on the outside of the table, just to the right of the brick, so she's not pretty flying and shaking. Who else has this? She makes it look really easy. All right. Let's continue soldering the rest of the chain. What's happening with those two pins? Oh, yeah. So, I have the chain kind of suspended. It's not suspended, because it's laying on the kiln brick, but I had it laying down, and I was trying to put the solder seams, so that I could see them with my tweezer. By the way, this tweezer is wonderful for this. And it was just flipping around and rolling around. So, I pinned one end down, and then pulled it taut with a little tension on it, and pinned the other end. And then, when I went to rotate and... Everybody's staying. Yeah, everybody's chill now. That's cool. Yeah. So, let's keep going. Do you have any questions before I start? No. Cool. Wow. Well done. I was thinking while you were doing that, I hope the torch doesn't run out of gas. So, if you guys are doing a project like this, where the flame is on for quite a bit of time, just make sure you top it off before you jump in. Let me zoom in. Looks good. You know, a project like this can seem pretty tedious. Yeah. But the practice is really, really good. And actually, the rhythm kind of does get you in this little bit of like a little meditative kind of cool thing, so. I like it. Off to the pickle? Off to the pickle. The chain is fresh out of the pickle pot. Here it is. Yeah, turned out pretty well. So, of course, you'd wanna go and check your solder seams, and go back and re-solder any that didn't... Successfully get soldered closed, right? That looks pretty good. It's cute. So, I was thinking that I would show them how to make the circle links into ovals. Ooh. Sound good? Yeah, let's do it. So, you could do... We could make every circle into an oval, or we could do every other. What do you think? Let's do every other. All right, every other. So, this is pretty simple. We're going to use round nose pliers. And the way that I do it is I just place... The handles of this plier are so long, I'm like, get under here. Okay. Place the jaws of the round nose... Because the metal's really soft. Super soft, yeah. Inside your link. And then... All right. And I'm not using all of my strength, you know? You don't have to open it open. This is also going to really test the strength of your solder seams, right? Yeah. Just like that. Let's do a few more. That looks fun. I'm gonna try to put the solder seam on the side, but it's not that important. Let's see here. Right? That looks nice, yeah. Mm-hmm. So, I would throw that in the tumbler when it's done, would you? Yeah, you could throw this in the tumbler. I would recommend binding it up a little bit before you put it in the tumbler. Oh, so it doesn't get all tangled? So it doesn't get tangled. And the way that you would do that is you could take a piece of scrap wire. Mm-hmm. And kind of just thread through maybe every other link. Good one, yeah. And you could use a handmade clasp, you could make a clasp. Mm-hmm. Simple and easy. I know you guys know how to do that. Well, and handmade clasps look so beautiful on handmade chain. There we go. So, I went through every other. Right? Yeah, I like it, but you're not making it too tight, so you want the... Yeah, I want the shot to still be able to get around. Cool. So this is a great way to tumble chain. Nice. Mm-hmm. Here's the chain out of the tumbler. Oh my gosh, Ayesha, it looks so cute. It's really pretty, and look how it's smooth over all those solder joints. I know, it kind of hides them. So I have made just a super simple clasp on here, a hook and eye clasp, and it's a basic chain, but what an awesome exercise. Yeah, this looks great.