Today I wanted to try out a new technique. It involves sandwiching an image between two pieces of glass, lining that glass with copper foil, and then using a soldering iron to seal the copper. I love the look of these types of charms and pendants and was very curious about trying to construct one.
 |
| I cut the image from a photocopied, antique Holy Card, then wrapped it in copper foil. |
First, this technique uses an soldering iron, not a torch. An iron uses lower temperatures than a torch and is commonly used in stained glass art. You still apply solder and flux to the copper tape before soldering with a hot iron.
 |
| Here I use my soldering tweezers to hold the piece before soldering. |
 |
| Yikes! A very bad soldering job. |
As you can see, my soldering turned out very badly! I believe part of my problem may be figuring out the correct temperature to have my iron set to. Sigh. I am determined to figure this out, though, and vow to try this again this weekend.
You can fix it. You just used too much solder. Heat up the soldering iron, touch it to the blobs of solder, and let them melt. You can remove some of the melted solder, using something like a toothpick or other implement to grab little bits of it, as you go.
ReplyDeleteOooo! That is awesome information to know. I will try it! Thank you!
ReplyDeleteKeep trying!!
ReplyDelete