purpleponyart | So close, yet so far away

It hurts to be just a couple of links away from finishing my necklace. I just want to get the pre-polish over and toss that baby into the tumbler! I was very mindful of not soldering the wrong rings to each other, and in fact, it seemed the universe was on my side tonight. One jump ring refused to solder together, and then I realized it was the wrong way. I also pushed around a little piece of solid solder and it skipped all over the brick. One last push resulted in it flipping right into the gap of the jump ring. Perfect! What a once in a lifetime thing.

We learned two new skills tonight, married metals and sweat soldering. Married metals is similar to marquetry, or artwork made from different pieces of joined wood. I can't say I'm too enthusiastic about married metals since it involves a lot of precision. Each half has to match perfectly, which requires some filing and mindfulness of the different properties of different metals. Soldering the halves together looked quite tricky too.

Sweat soldering could be really useful. Basically you place solder on side, heat the piece, place the other side on top, and heat around it to melt the solder completely. This also looks quite tricky - I'll find out when I make the sample.