Yvonne,
why mess with something you don’t need? Don’t bother going to
“Paris” or “dental school”… go old school- tie wire.
Now, there’s an old saying that sounds appropriate here; it goes
like this: “you can do a lot just by trying”.
From the clues in your short, post, I'd say you were working in
silver; I'll assume that is correct.
So here ya go, try this recipe.
Make your workpiece using a suitable gage material, such as 16 ga. It
will last, have a good hefty feel, yet be formable enough. It wont
“relax” and flatten out as you solder it.
Use suitable sized iron wire to hold your bezel(s) down. Don’t use
iron wire so big that it will crush the bezels.
Warm up the piece, then coat the whole thing with your fav flav of
flux / firescale inhibitor. (. lots of surface area for the nasty
firescale to show up in if you don’t prevent it).
Then place, prop up, or lay the work piece in your soldering area
and solder away!
If your workpiece is really hefty, build a back /side wall with
charcoal bricks to help hold/reflect heat.
Know the bracelet will have to come up to temp to solder… so
watch the bezel(s) carefully and avoid overheating them. Use a big tip
( prestolite #3) and soft brushy flame.
( again I’m assuming you have one of the highly dangerous “plumbers”
air-acetylene torches that has gotten so much attention lately) ( yes
I’m grinning- but they’re a good entry level torch.)
Don’t try it with a micro torch…They are cute, but they don’t
have enough BTU throughput to solder a silver beetle onto a large
bracelet. Maybe a gold one… but not silver. (laughing) )
And last, but not unimportant… don’t forget to remove the iron
binding wire before pickling!
You can see pics of a few bracelets that I’ve done on
skyblurocks.com.
The three bracelets shown are “hollow”… that is they have a front
and back.
I soldered them as described above with no problem.
yeah… the site needs a bit of work yet, updated pics, etc… but
it’s a work in progress- I keep trying!
steve