Soldering Techniques For Jewelry

Building  Jewelry Art Through Soldering Techniques

Soldering techniques are a simple and effective way of creating a wide variety of jewelry art.  Soldering is actually only one element of jewelry creation, but it can be combined with the whole wide variety of other techniques to produce some very spectacular pieces. For many jewelry artists, soldering is one of the first things that is taught as it is a basic technique for building or repairing a variety of types of jewelry.

Soldering is used on both silver and gold jewelry pieces. it can be used to join items that were created by completely different techniques. So as an example, an item created through lost wax casting could be joined to an object that was produced by stamping.  In essence, soldering is a technique to join together two different metal items for the purpose of producing one unified piece. The two pieces being joined do not have to be of the same metal, and silver can be joined to gold or copper, silver joined to gold, etc. This technique can be used to reduce some very unique multi-metal jewelry art pieces.

The key to soldering is the use of a special alloy which melts at lower temperature than the materials which are being soldered together. The special alloy bonds to both of the pieces joining them together into a single unit. This "special alloy" is of course the solder itself. One of the most important keys to producing a good strong soldered joint is that both of the metals being soldered together must have an extremely clean surface.  Dirt and oil or other products can interfere with joining the two pieces together and produce a joint which easily falls apart. Fluxes and other cleaners are used to make sure that the surfaces been joined by the solder are clean.  It does take a little bit of practice to learn how to apply just the right amount of heat to melt the solder but not fuse, oxidize or warp the two pieces which are being joined together. Soldering is not however, excessively difficult.

A wide variety of different kinds of solder with areas alloy makeup and melting temperatures.  These are used for certain specific applications. Both the raw solder and the necessary tools for making jewelry can be purchased through jewelry supply houses.  There are a number of these jewelry supply businesses that advertise actively through the Internet and reliably sell everything they jewelry artist would need through the mail. Books are also available to describe a variety of projects that can be created using jewelry soldering techniques.

Virtually all turquoise jewelry of the American Indian style is produced through a variety of soldering techniques. There are a number of excellent books available which teach jewelry soldering methods and techniques, and specifically the special techniques which are used in creating American Indian style turquoise jewelry.