How to Make Soldered Jewelry, Episode #7 - Soldering a Jump Ring Closed

Hi, I'm Lisa Niven-Kelley here for another episode in our Introduction to Soldering series and in this one we're going to learn how to solder shut a jump ring. In this episode we switch from that big bushy flame on the max flame torch to a blazer torch that has a little more pointy flame so we can get just right at that seam in the jump ring. I'll be honest with you, I hadn't soldered jump rings in a while and I had the camera right in front of my face and I didn't have my glasses on so I was like, I'm just going to do this. I'm going to pick solder this jump ring and I went for it and totally melted it. I'm going to show you a little picture of it now. Look at that. Isn't that beautiful? I'm so proud. And I'm just showing that so you know that even though I solder jump rings closed all the time, stuff happens so don't panic. So the first jump ring that we're going to solder shut is a jump ring just at the end of a chain. So this will be the end that a clasp will come into and clamp into. Okay, first I'm going to come in with my torch. Again, it's pretty low, not too high, and apply some flux, flux, flux. There we go. And you can see my pallium right here. See that little square? I'm going to melt that guy right now into a ball. And again, this is called pick soldering. It's going to pick up at the pick. Boop. And then you just lay it right on the seam. Make sure that your jump ring is warm and bam, the key here is in and out. You see how fast that was? So if I had used too much solder that would be quite a bit of a mess but that was perfect. Cool, we got that guy soldered shut. Now the next one that we're going to solder shut is a jump ring that now attaches the clasp to the chain. We're going to hold it a little bit differently. All right, so I've got my torch on and I'm going to flux it real quick. I've got the torch pretty low because I don't want to melt that jump ring or that chain and it gets nice and pointy. So now off camera I'm going to build a little pallium guy just like we did before. Pick it up and here we come. Carefully right on top of that seam. Here it comes, the little ball, the torch and the ball is on. Let's get that guy melted down to the seam. All right, now lastly a lot of people ask us how do I solder a jump ring closed that's on a pendant? To solder this jump ring closed I'm going to use paste solder. I've got a little bit on my pick here. This has flux already in it. Let's get a little bit right on the seam there. That's great and I'm going to come in with my torch. I'm going to use a blazer because it's more pointed and I'm just going to keep the heat on the jump ring, not on the blank. You'll see the binder burn out of the solder here, the paste solder. Let's go on both sides, a little flame, there it goes. You'll see the solder fell down to the bottom a little bit but let's see when it melts if it'll come up the seam.