I make a lot of earrings, and I pick solder the jump rings. The
actual soldering only takes about two seconds. Whats taking the most
time is moving the earrings in and out of the third-hand. Can anyone
suggest a method for soldering the rings that might speed up my
production? With about a hundred pairs of earrings to go I really
need to get through this faster if possible
Thank you for any suggestions!
Pam East
Can anyone suggest a method for soldering the rings that might speed up my production?
The only thing I can think of, is if you have an area large enough to
lay them out, use alligator clips from the hardware store to set up
the jump rings in position, you could set up 10 or 20 at a time.
Alligator clips have springs so you cannot heat the spring, don’t use
ones with plastic on them. Don’t put the alligator clip in sparex.
Richard Hart
Assemble all your earrings/jumprings first. Try holding your torch
in a third hand or similar facing away from you, jumpring in
clamping tweezers in one hand, pick and solder in the other. Once
you get the hang on it, it goes real fast.
Pam-Get a charcol block and cut a bunch of slots in it. Stand your
jump rings up in the slots with the seams showing at the top, then
solder them all at once. To speed things up even faster, you can use
paste solder. Line them up. Put paste solder on all of them, then hit
them all with a torch at once.
G’day Take a pair of stainless steel cross-lock tweezers, drill a
small hole in the back end. Fasten the tweezers to a small weight of
some kind - a block of hardwood perhaps. I filled a 2 inch tin lid
with molten lead and when cold using a self-tapping screw fastened
the tweezers to the weight. Finger of one hand presses the tweezers
open, other tweezers in the other hand inserts ring, With the lock
tweezers closed, solder the ring as usual. Filing or grinding the
business end of the lock tweezers to a blunt point will avoid too
much heat loss of the ring. Simple cheap and effective.
Cheers for now,
JohnB of NZ
Hi Pam,
Without knowing where your doing the soldering I don’t know if this
suggestion will be of any value.
You might consider the use of paste solder. When I have multiple
pieces to solder, I line them up in rows on a firebrick so the joints
are at 12 o’clock. Then apply the paste solder to the joint (usually
the inside). After solder has been applied to all the joints I turn
the brick around so the joints are at 6 o’clock. Then, starting in
the upper LH corner apply heat to the joints until all have been
soldered.
In some cases where the ring to be soldered is part of a previously
completed item that doesn’t allow the ring to lay flat, I dig a
little hole(s) in the brick to accommodate part of the completed
piece so the ring can lay flat or almost flat.
Dave
Pam.
My first thought is to ask why you’re using a third hand for the
job. Is the design such that it can’t lay flat?
If you can lay it flat, you can lay them all out (or a whole bunch)
on a large soldering pad on a lazy susan, then just move the torch
from one to the next. With a little practice, you can go really
quickly because the ambient heat from soldering one will pre-heat the
next one to perfection.
If they can’t lay flat, is there some type of multi-earring jig that
you can rig up, perhaps with thick binding wire or on a metal dowel,
to hold a whole bunch in line (like a clothesline)?
Karen Goeller
No Limitations Designs
Hand-made, one-of-a-kind jewelry
www.nolimitations.com
Pam,
I lay the jump rings down in rows on a Solderite board and have the
seams all lined up at 6 o’clock. I then flux them and start
soldering. To pick them up I roll them up on the solder pick and dump
the lot in the pickle. Goes by really quick.
Pam,
you may want to try this method. Use a 2 mm pencil lead, the type
used in engineer’s mechanical pencils, heat it with a torch to burn
out the wax. This is then effectively a thin graphite rod. You can
then hold the pencil lead in a third hand and thread your fluxed jump
rings onto it with the seam facing upwards. Using solder paste, you
can then play your flame over the whole row and solder them all. Then
just slide them off into your pickle.
John Bowling
Wow! Thanks for all the great suggestions! The person who taught me
to solder (we’re just talking a 15 minute lesson here, not a whole
class) used the third hand, so that’s what I’ve been doing. Never
occurred to me to just lay them out across my soldering board. Doh…
lol.
Several of you suggested switching to paste solder. Do you still
need to flux with that? Or is the flux built in?
Thank you again!
Pam East
Hello Pam,
You asked, “Can anyone suggest a method for soldering the rings that
might speed up my production?”
This may not apply to your problem, but this is how I solder bunches
of rings: I scatter out bits of solder on the brick. Put a few drops
of Battern’s flux in a little container. Soldering tweezers in
dominant hand, torch in the other.
I pick up the ring in tweezers so that the joint is opposite where
the tweezer grasps. (The rings are in a random pile initially, and I
just look carefully when picking up the ring.) Dip the joint in flux.
Heat the solder into a ball and pick it up with the ring joint. A bit
more heat on the joint to flow the solder and drop into pickle.
I do this on all gauges from band rings to jump rings - just vary
the heat.
NOTE: This doesn’t always work so well with Argentium (AS) - heat
control is very important. AS gets brittle when hot and will "break"
apart where the tweezers grasp. Much better to fuse AS.
Judy in Kansas, where the house has been open ALL day to enjoy the
light, moderate breezes.
Judy M. Willingham, R.S.
you may want to try this method. Use a 2 mm pencil lead, the type used in engineer's mechanical pencils, heat it with a torch to burn out the wax. This is then effectively a thin graphite rod. You can then hold the pencil lead in a third hand and thread your fluxed jump rings onto it with the seam facing upwards. Using solder paste, you can then play your flame over the whole row and solder them all. Then just slide them off into your pickle.
This is what Orchid is all about for me!!! The original question
seemed like a simple question and it never dawned on me that there
would be so many answers. I love it because it stimulates my thinking
in many related areas.
Thanks so much to everyone.
Jamie
Hi Pam,
Several of you suggested switching to paste solder. Do you still need to flux with that? Or is the flux built in?
Paste solder is pulverized solder that has a flux mixed with it. The
mixture then has a volatile liquid (usually mineral spirits) mixed
with it to make it a paste.
The mixture adheres to the item to which it’s applied. The amount
applied is controlled by how much the plunger in the syringe is
pressed… Usually syringes come with 2 interchangeable needles, a 16
& 18 ga.
Dave
I got rid of the problem of soldering jump rings by switching to
Argentium silver which is weldable. I can zip through the links on a
chain faster than I could ever solder them, no cliping solder, no
paste solder which I could never use and don’t even need flux.
Sam Patania, Tucson
www.silverhuntress.com