I made a quite large dichroic cuff bracelet of silver. A rather
smallish woman loves it and wants me to “fix” it to fit her. The
dichroic cabochon is set with a silver backplate which is soldered
onto the top of the cuff. Can anyone tell me if the dichroic must be
taken out of the setting before I can do any torch work to heat it to
remove the backplate and then resolder the backplate onto another
piece of silver shaped to the proper size cuff?
J. S. (Sue) Ellington
http://www.jsellington.com
Hi Sue,
The dichroic glass cab is very prone to thermal shock, so the safe
thing to do is remove it.
Donna
SilverSorceress Designs
http://www.silversorceress.com
Yes you should remove the dichoric glass before heating. It might be
just as easy overall to make a right sized bracelet from scratch.
jesse
Yes, you will have to remove it. Glass cannot take rapid temperature
change and you run the risk of cracking it. Good luck!
Kerry
http://www.celtcraftdesigns.com
I do a lot of dichroic glass work with silver and would recommend
removing the glass work before doing any soldering on the cuff.
That’s the safe and sure way to approach what you want to do.
Occasionally a piece can be soldered if the glass is far enough
removed from the source of heat. I protect the glass in fibre blanket
and some gel coolant stuff for stone setting but haven’t been
entirely successful with this method…
Sadie
i’m not certain i understand the resizing of the cuff bracelet
process you are describing, however it sounds like you’ll have to
take the cab out of the bezel first.
If you can avoid removing the backplate and simply resize the
bracelet,saw it and file and finish to size it.
OR- apply a heat shield ( vigor brand works best, second to wet
wadded newspaper, or any number of other products from kool jool to
rio’s soldering clay) to the cab and with the most minimal flame
necessary, remelt the solder & remove the backing.then construct
another setting,solder it to the cuff and reset the cab…glass that
is hot and dry cracks, at best, and explodes at worst. If you keeep
it protected you may get away with not removing it if you work
quickly and/or used med. or easy solder to begin with…If you used
hard plumb solder, i think removing the cab is the answer.