On 19th of September 2011 I proudly started "introduction to structural jewellery City&Guilds course" at City Lit, London. It was nice to meet new people and our lovely tutor Felix who tries very hard we all feel comfortable and she hopes we all become friends. First we had to talk to our neighbour sits opposite, ask few questions, make for this person name card and introduce her to others. Mine was Jitka, retired school teacher who has all ready some experiance with soldering. Look how she made my name card, as she described it is Gosia's fireworks :)
But enough talking! We had very busy first lesson after fun introductions each of us got piece of copper and brass, piercing saw, big files (the one for jewwelers are with cross cut) and prepare two pieces of metal to fit perfectly to each other to be able to solder it later using technique called butt soldering. First we had to set up our sits correctly at jeweller's bench, apparently you have to level middle of your arms with the top of the bench. Then everyone had to try to fit sawing blade into saw without getting any instructions -first torture prepared by our Felix :) With a bit of help from Bill (he is mettalurgist and he tries now to play with metals in totally different scale) who showed me how to make a blade to be tens on a saw I did it. Then we saw and filed our copper and brass pieces which wasn't so easy I you could think. Hands are hearting quite a bit. Copper is the one which is easier to work with as it is softer but you can damage it quicker plus it gets hot whilst you file it. You must to know there have to be no light comming through if you place your metal piece on a straight flat line of file to be able to solder it well. Soldering was the most exciting moment of the lesson for me. First you have to make both pieces flat, you do it with help of a wooden hammer. Then you put flux (ie. borax http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Borax ) onto part where two metals will be soldered, so on a sides and edges). Cut few couple of pieces of silver hard or medium solder, put flux on it and place it onto joining part in an iqual intervals. Now there is the time you lighten your torch, do remember to put far away your lighter after you do so!! Now you heat both pieces of metal all over it so both pieces gets very hot and orange when the flux bubble and the solder flow through joining - magic! :) You can leave your perfectly soldered piece to cool down itself (which is better for metal) or put it into water. Then place it to copper pickle with copper tweezers. Wait until it washes off then clean it with water. DONE! :)
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