Tricks to making small silver balls for sterling silver decoration….(does that make sense? hahaha)

So I just started trying to make these little silver accent balls for my jewelry.  Some tricks and lessons learned:

Use fine silver, not sterling silver.  Take any leftover fine silver bezel wire and melt those down into balls.  Try to keep the strips you cut the same length.  If you make the balls too big they have a tendency to collapse in on themselves and not create a nice round ball.  If you want the balls to be flat on one side solder them on a flat surface.  However, if you would like your silver balls to have a perfect spherical shape you can dig out a little hole in your soldering block, this will keep the silver from forming a flat side.

Adhering the balls to the surface is just that easy, file one side of your ball so it has a flat surface to sit on, otherwise it may roll on you during soldering.  Place a small piece of medium solder under your ball and heat.  Easy as that!!

key take aways:

• use fine silver scrap
• don’t make them too big, they won’t hold their spherical shape
• dig out a little hole in your soldering block to make perfect spheres
• use medium solder (depending on your design and steps/order of your process)

 

 

Techniques tutorial …what would you like to know?

I am going to start posting metal jewelry techniques for all of my followers.  I may not know everything but I know some things :0). Upcoming posts will include etching different metals, stone settings, finishes, etc.  if there is something you would like to learn or know let me know I will post my experiences.  I think it’s great to have a community of resources to learn from.  A lot of people get offended when you ask questions about their techniques but I think that’s lame.  We should want to share techniques….no one can steal your ideas and style!