Hello! Looking for advice on how to correct a mistake I’ve made a couple times now constructing spinner rings.
At the very last step of expanding the edge of the second side of the ring, (so the inside rings don’t slip off), I seem to crack my original solder on the base ring.
Either my original solder is weak, or I need to anneal the ring once more for the final hammer.
Am I explaining well enough?
If I do anneal the ring again, I’m afraid I’ll ruin the beautiful polish. Is that a necessary step to finish off the ‘closure’?
Let me know if I can explain a little better. Any advice would be helpful.
Thanks,
T
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After you pre-polish, clean the piece well and get all the grease off. Then coat with a boric acid and alcohol solution and burn off the alcohol. You can then anneal without a lot of damage to your polish. Soak the piece well in water after you pickle to get all of the flux off and then form the outside edge. You might also consider the solder that you are using. You are likely soldering the inside spinner ring with a high melting point solder than the outside base ring depending on how you make your ring. You might try lowering these solder melting points a bit. I know that we are taught to use hard solder as much as we can to keep the color and purity true, but lower melting point solders can make our work a lot easier. Joints popping can be very frustrating. It usually points back to the basics. When it happens to me, I stop and clean my solder area well, change my pickle and rinse water, make sure my solder isn’t dirty or contaminated in some way and then take a break. As a side comment, you can buy fairly simple small mandrels to make spinner rings. I have never used one as I rarely make spinner rings, but you might take a look at them. Good luck…Rob
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This was very helpful - Thank you Rob.
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