Know your way around wire and solder and you're golden.
For various personal, uninteresting and probably inexcusable reasons I have had a lazy weekend, so I chose two tutorials to match my schedule, involving gold wire, solder and substantially more in the way of creative problem solving than effort and patience. It was one of those weekends, so perversely I thought of two tutorials to match, for the following items I happened to be coveting:
You will need
NB: You will also need at least one pair of long-nosed pliers or, ideally, two, as you'd be working with thick, stubborn wire.
Difficulty
Quite easy
Unfortunately, these projects weren't as easy as I thought they would be. Solder and aluminium can be extremely temperamental to work with and although the aluminium wire I worked with was soft, it does help to be a competent modeller.
Time
Hard to say. I'd say the ring and necklace each took me about 20 minutes to complete, excluding the soldering, which can take a while to get right.
To make the necklace...
Using pliers, bend and cut the wire into your intended design.
Attach the chain by opening the jump rings, linking them to the shape and closing them with the pliers. Then, close the top with a thick, generous blob of solder.
Finally, attach the clasp to the chain with jump rings.
To make the ring...
Wrap the wire around your finger and twist it to secure it at the top, making sure it's loose enough to slip off easily. Give it an extra 2-3 twists to stop it from unravelling.
Twist 1-2 loops on either side and cut off the excess wire at the edges.
Fix the 'knot' where your twists and loops are with solder at the back, in order to make it look more like a smooth bow and less like a nest of tangled wires.
No comments:
Post a Comment