PB Cohen Creations

"Marriage of metals" is a technique where you solder pieces of metal together to make a sheet, and then use that sheet to create something else. If you're good at sawing and measuring, you can make intricate puzzle pieces with the different colors of metals. Or, you can do what I did many years ago, and just work with straight lines. You can click on this photo for a bigger version, the metals in question are sterling silver and brass. Truth be told, I did a pretty bad job on this. It's very important to keep all the pieces flat, which I didn't do very well. And I also used too much solder. Waaaaaay too much.

Be sure to click on this photo to see some of the worst parts labeled.

Blobs of solder can be sanded off, but gaps can't be fixed as easily. I guess I could try to re-flow the solder, but I fear the more I fuss with this, the more problems I'll create. And in one or two spots, an extra bit of solder (shudder) might be needed — and that's where the age of this sheet comes in. I'm sure I was smart enough to use Hard solder when I first made this, but I have no idea which "brand" of solder I used. Since it's likely that every refinery creates a slightly different mix for solder, I'd really be taking a big chance that the old and new solders would flow at slightly different temperatures, which would make an even bigger mess of the sheet.

Not to worry, since it's relatively easy to sand a small piece of the sheet so it's flat and pretty. Here's a ring I made a few weeks ago.


I plan to make more of these rings, but unfortunately, numbers 2 and 3 didn't work out so well.
Click on this picture for a large version, where you can see that the some of the seams of the "marriage" lost integrity.

I'm not exactly sure what happened. I used Easy solder to attach the ring shank to the shapes cut from my big marriage of metals sheet, so you wouldn't think that the Hard joins would melt — at least, not on both numbers 2 and 3, since I didn't solder them both at the same time. That's some pretty bad luck. Plus, ring number 1 worked very easily. The only thing I can think of is that I rested the shapes on a regular old fire brick for numbers 2 and 3. I don't remember what I used for number 1, but it's possible (and possibly even likely) that I used a solderite board. Although I don't know for sure, the heat properties are probably different.

So I'll use a solderite board for ring number 4. If that doesn't work, I suppose I'll have to re-think everything.

Any ideas?

I'm taking a casting class this semester at the Ann Arbor Art Center. Many years ago I took a one-day workshop in casting, during which I learned one thing, and one thing only: wax carving is hard! (I no longer have the weird silver blob that I created that day, or I'd show it to you. I wonder what happened to that...?) So this time around, I'm concentrating on carving the wax, and casting a few things. No serious thought on what to do with the finished bits, no worries about designing around cast pieces — just the wax carving. Still working on it. This is my first attempt at carving a bird-like creature out of wax:

To be more precise, I'm doing reasonably well at carving tiny things in wax, but I'm definitely having a hard time seeing in three dimensions. This is my first time at any sort of sculpture (that I remember, anyway), so I guess I'm doing okay. But still, it's not quite right. This little fellow isn't finished, but I got stuck on the right side of the beak — which is the left side on this photo. You can click on these pictures for bigger versions, and I was hoping the extreme close-ups would help me, but they didn't. Truth is, I took away too much wax from that side, and am stuck with it. I tried adding a little blob of sticky wax there, and am currently trying to shape that, but the sticky wax doesn't really carve. It's possible a well-placed file will do the trick, but I'm not sure yet. I might try casting him in bronze (much cheaper than silver) just to see what happens. In the meantime, I've started working on a few more little wax sculptures. We'll see what happens. Slow, slow, slow. But if I can figure it out, it'll be fun! (And now that I've stopped dreaming that I'm carving up my wrists, things are going much better!)

I keep doing birds, but I think I should try some monsters, or fantasy creatures — since if I don't get them "right" nobody will know but me! The other thing I might be able to do is cut my sculptures down the middle, to create two "halves." Sort of a bas-relief treatment. That way if the two sides don't match each other, or if the whole thing ends up too wide (two of my current problems) it won't matter.

Remember the "Relic" rings?
(And yes, I originally called these "Julia" rings because I made some for my niece. But I've started calling them "Relics" since that takes less explaining.)

I made a big one ("man-sized"), and realized I'd created a weak spot. See where the end of the arrow comes to the edge of the ring band? Click on this mediocre photo of the ring before final polishing and a patina to see a bigger version. I was pretty sure that even regular wear could break that spot, since the single layer of silver is only 24 gauge thick, tops. Rather than make a repair after it broke, when it was bound to be harder to do (since the break probably wouldn't be clean), I decided to repair it before anything untoward happened.

This mediocre photo shows the inside of the ring, where I soldered a small patch of silver right against backside of the arrow's shaft. Lots of sanding made it smooth.

Again, click on the photo for a bigger version. Still no patina or final polish.

I use a lot of jump rings as bails, either soldered onto the back of a pendant or — more often lately — linked through the pendant. I solder all of the jump rings closed. This is a little easier to do if the ring will be soldered onto something later, since you can lay the circle of wire flat on the soldering block: there's less of a chance it will melt since the whole thing is evenly protected by the block.

[Note that there are many different ways to solder a ring of metal, whether it's a jump ring, a finger-sized ring, a bezel wall, or whatever. One of the current instructors at the Art Center holds a ring in a tweezers locked in a third hand: the tweezers draws some of the heat away...or something...and this is good...or so it seems. Except that I didn't learn to solder rings that way, and my first few attempts didn't seem easier (change is always hard!), and I haven't spent the time to practice the technique. So I solder single rings flat on a block.]

When you're soldering a jump ring "in place," the ring is looped through another piece of metal, and the two ends to be joined are sticking up in the air — as far from the metal as possible, so solder isn't likely to jump to it, and thus the ring is almost totally exposed. Read: easily melted.

The other day I was finally finishing up some fish I'd made a few years ago, with something completely different (now mostly forgotten) in mind. Since they'd been sitting so long (and I still like them) I decided to solder bails on them and string them as pendants. The thing is, I chose to use thinner, bigger jump rings than I'd been using lately, and disaster struck.

Lately, usually — and let me first say that all measurements are approximate, but I just sat with all three jump rings and a ruler, so theoretically the data should be, you know, useful enough for comparison. So, lately I've been using jump rings that are either 1/8" inner diameter (3mm) 20 gauge, or 3/16" inner diameter (4mm) 18 gauge. The first is thinner wire and a smaller circle, the second is thicker wire and a bigger circle.

The jump rings I chose for the fish (why? you ask. Because the other two jump rings were too small, and mostly because I had these on hand) were 7/32" inner diameter (5mm) 20 gauge: the thinner wire and an even bigger circle. Out of practice with this size and with half of it sticking up in the air, it was really easy to melt these while trying to solder them together, and melt them I did! I managed to solder four jump rings, but I also melted four (maybe five) others.

The thing is, when I worked on the jump rings for the next three or four fish, I only melted one or two. Practice really does help, whether you're completely new to a technique, or you simply haven't used a particular size of jump ring since you threw together a delicate chain two years ago to wear to a fancy dinner.

I always tell students the best way to get over the fear of melting things with a blow torch learn to solder is to make a chain: you're working on very small things, so you're gonna melt some, get over it! And you're using a lot of them, so there's lots of practice. Obviously, making a chain means you're working with small objects. This won't help you learn how to solder really big things together. But it will help you learn how to solder, and get over some of your fear of melting things.

I love the look of patinas, but I'm really too much of a perfectionist to enjoy the process. It's also pretty messy. This photo of my sink shows my typical setup for liver of sulfur (you can click on it for a big version). The small mug (no longer used for beverage consumption) is holding freshly-boiled water. The shallow plastic tub (no longer used for storing food) is holding the liver of sulfur solution, plus seven post earrings, post up.

Usually I string pieces onto small lengths of copper wire so I can easily dip them into the hot water, patina solution, and back again (and again and again) without getting my fingers either hot or colored by patina. But I can't figure out how to attach the wire to posts.

Maybe I could drill holes into a strip of metal, and hold the posts on with some plastic clutches (no longer to be used for anything but this task). Something like that.

At any rate, until I figure out something easier than dipping each post by hand, one by one by one by one by one, I don't think I'll combine a post design with a patina. No need to drive myself crazy, right?

A few days ago I asked the internets for advice on drawing a bead on a wire, and struck up a conversation with Maxine. Thanks, Maxine! It worked! Since I was having such a hard time with this, I figured the success story deserved a blog entry of its own.

Here's the problem: one of my Monster Rings.

The "head" is a bead created via hollow form construction, which is then soldered onto a ring shank. The "arms" are made from 16 gauge fine silver wire, with a bead drawn at each end. I was having a really hard time getting the "arms" as short as I wanted them. Part of the trick is knowing how short to cut the wire before drawing that second bead, but I was really afraid my torch (acetylene and air) simply wasn't getting hot enough — and that the "head" was acting as a heat sink as the drawn bead got closer to it.

Maxine's suggestion that the material I was using to keep the solder from re-flowing during the procedure might also act as a heat shield gave me some much-needed confidence. See, once I made the mistake of using such a large torch tip that the whole "head" got heated up, and since I stupidly didn't have anything on the solder joins, the ring completely fell apart! Despite the fact that I've practically dunked the whole ring in "Liquid Paper" ever since, I was still afraid of destroying another ring, and — coincidentally? — never quite managed to get those "arms" short enough.

But last Saturday, with five rings to do, I was determined to get it right. It's been awhile since I've used yellow ochre powder mixed with water to paint solder seams (it's a little slow to dry), so I'm sure there are tricks to using that that would be helpful. But one notable thing about "Liquid Paper" and "Wite-Out" is that they burn. This gave me a reasonable indication of how hot things were getting. First the correction fluid gets completely dry, then it catches fire, then it goes all gray — and actually, I've never heated anything up enough to know what happens when the correction fluid fails. Or if it fails, for that matter: that would be a good experiment to try.

As I was drawing the bead on the wire, the side of the "head" closest to the "arm" I was trying to create was in the flame of the torch, and the correction fluid caught on fire, but it never got all gray. So despite my fear of destroying the ring, I could tell it was safe, and I successfully finished the "arms" on all five rings. It was a good day!