I Finished my first gold bracelet!!!!!!!

I finished the bugger last night! Now all I have to do is polish it some more and take some pictures, because this will be a usless post with out some images. Hopefully later today!!!!

The House of Giant Bugs

I'm not sure why but we seem to have alot of very large bugs at our house in southern PA.

Usually its just very large wolf spiders but this time its the attack of the giant beetle.

My wife's foot is a size 6.

If any one knows what kind of beetle this is please let me know.

Volume #3 My First Gold Bracelet

Truing up the rings after soldering by hitting them with the plastic mallet onto the original mandrel, so each ring will be uniform in size and shape.

Post soldering and truing up, they look pretty nice all discolored and and yellowish. They looked pretty much like bras rings at this point, but weighted a bit more.

The rings have been soldered, then pickled (mild acid bath to take off the flux).

Here is the coil of round rings that will be used in the bracelet befor they are cut.

After cutting and cleaning.

Volume #2 My First Gold Bracelet

Annealing the cut oval rings. Its pretty tough to take a picture while trying not to melt gold wire.

After annealing trying to get the cut ends to line up for soldering.

More squishing and bending to get the ends to line up.

I soldered them one at a time so if one melted, I wouldn't panic and melt more. ( its really tough to take a picture wile holding a torch)

Cutting the 18k solder with a pair of metal shears.

Volume #1 My First Gold bracelet

Here's the unassuming start to a bracelet. Just 6.5 feet of gold wire.

Wraping the large oval rings, the gold felt like steel wire.

Trying to anneal the wire, didn't work out too well. I was to chicken to pour on the heat.

The rings have been cut off the oval dowel. Then promptly spread apart, so I had to anneal them enough for easy bending then soldering.

A new freind I found......

Now for the fun....a new freind I found in my work shop. He/she was hanging out on a vertical serface where I solder. She fit very nicely into one of the larger of the smaller mason jars. Just hung out when I took her outside into my wife's garden. Didn't try to get away, no fear of myself or the camera.