De De: I just finished making a silver rattle for my grandson. I
used some of the steel shot from my tumbler. Don’t use too much
or they won’t have room to rattle around. Have fun, Frances
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Frances…This sounds like something I should be doing for
soon to arrive first grandchildren (notice the plural ). To make
a decent sound I would think that the rattle should be hard
rather than annealed. How do you solder the two sections that
contain the shot together and keep them hard ? or how do you
harden them later ?
Sol K.
Hi Sol, All the best for the imminent event (events?). If you
make the rattles out of sterling silver rather than fine silver
you shouldn’t have any problems. If this was a problem, you could
always make the rattley bit out of, say, nickel silver and
enclose that in a fine silver design. With best wishes, Rex from
Oz
Hi, Sol: I hope you get to see your grandchildren more often
than I see my grandson. I don’t think annealing was a problem for
me. I use easy solder and a thick gauge of silver, such as 20
gauge or 18. I put the lower part of the sphere into the pumice.
It doesn’t take long. I also did some engraving afterward. By
the way, the parts get a lot of hardening in the hydraulic press.
Frances
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