Why make simple copper bangles when you can make "tricky" copper bangles? That's tricky to me anyway, other people would probably find them super simple! I'm talking about copper bangles with five small sterling silver concave discs soldered to the outside. Not hard to make just tricky.
I wanted to combine copper and silver as I love the look of the two metals together. The fiddly bit was the soldering of the silver discs to the outside of the copper bangles. I wanted then evenly spaced and was about to Google how to divide a circle into five parts when I realized I know how to do this already - just remember the length of wire you used for the bangles and divide by five!
After quite a lot of faffing about with my third hand and my fibre board soldering block (and swearing, mustn't forget that) I got the first disc soldered to the first bangle. Only 14 more to go. I had to pickle in between each soldering too which made it quite a laborious process but I got a little production line going in the end and managed to get the bangles finished with a big sigh of relief.
The main problem I have is that my reverse action tweezers I use with the third hand don't have a very good grip so things tend to move just when I don't want them to. I'm not sure what to do to sort this. If I could find some that had a firm grip I could possibly hold the bangle upright myself in the tweezers whilst I solder.
I recently bought another version of a third hand which looked a lot more sturdy. It has two grippers - for want of a better word - and it's own small soldering block in between. The grips seemed a lot sturdier when I first got it (after I tightened up all the screws about three times), but when I tried it with the bangles I found it even more awkward to use to be honest! It was hard to position and get it to stay in position. Oh well. It's the cheap version so that's probably why. I almost set fire to the rubber that covers the small feet underneath it too. I wondered what the funny smell was........
I also made some more twisted wire bangles with some of the wire I twisted at college earlier this year. These are great to make. The only fiddly bit is matching up the ends. I normally pick solder the join on bangles now as I find it a lot easier and quicker than chasing small bits of solder around when the flux bubbles, especially on twisted wire!
If anyone can help me out with suggestions for tweezers I can use to hold metal as I'm soldering that have a firmer grip than the wooden handle reverse action tweezers that are widely available then please do leave a comment!
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