Saturday, September 18, 2010

Mystery Solved

I found residue of investment. I believe they used investment to protect the bakelite. Filling with investment letting solidify and then soldering with hard solder, then putting into water to dissolve investment, so bracelet remains hollow and light weight. That is my plan now for repairs.  Will let you know if it works.
NO! this is the wrong way, continue on to other post to show how it is done. I was looking at it the wrong way.  There is no way to hard solder and protect Bakelite.  You must remove and then fix bracelet and then reset bakelite.

Rare Bracelet Ballesteros Bracelet

Did you ever wonder how these were made?
The next picture will show. The real mystery was how they used hard solder to set Bakelite(a synthetic resin). I found out this week.

Sunday, June 13, 2010

This an example of Paul De Lamerie. and a very good reason to keep lead out of the studio if possible.(and ofcouse for your own health) To me it is interesting how silver seems to be softer over time. I have a theory, the more a silver object is handled by human hands the softer it becomes. When you have a museum quality object to work upon, it is best to do the least amount of work on it as possible. Thinking this through is important. No need to rush on a very valuable piece.
Assortment of gloves for work, I use for polishing, bench work, hammer work, repairing antique pieces with lead. Which brings up the subject of lead. Lead work must be kept separate from other work, especially gold and silver. I have different soldering blocks for lead filled pieces and for the gold work, and for the silver work. I keep everything separate, including files and soldering tools. I learned the hard way. Contaminating a gold ring and ruining it with particles of lead, I thought I had cleaned up. I would suggest being very careful, in what you accept for work. If you can avoid antiques with weighted parts, do so. All Sheffield Plate is weighted by lead. Plated work is often weighted by lead. When they first invented Electroplating or as we know it today as plating,  the companies went wild making things that looked very elaborate and expensive, but were really plate filled with lead. An illusion of opulence, I call it.

Tuesday, May 18, 2010

Here are more examples of the tools.
Here is an idea, that I wish I had come up with along time ago.  I use the dapping tools for removing dents in vessels.  I turned brass stock on lathe and tapped for insert screws to hold dapping tools in place.  I made each end the exact diameter of the stock of the dapping tools. This is a way to make a tool that will go into very deep vessels. I also use the tools for special curves in my creative work.