Week 17: learning how to solder

This week's project was something I've wanted to try since March 2007 when I purchased an on line instruction book on how to make soldered glass pendants. I was so enamored with those little glass pendants. I don't care if they are "so three years ago"; I still love them. The instruction book sat in my email all this time but when Breen purchased me my very own soldering iron for Mother's Day, I knew the time had come. For this particular learning experience, I decided to try my hand at soldering a larger piece until I got the feel for it. Soldering on jump rings on a 1x1 inch piece of glass seemed a bit daunting on my first try. Boy was this an interesting project with many learning experiences.

I had purchased an old book with vintage circus poster images that were the perfect size of 4x6 inches. I removed the pages from the book, scanned them on to my computer and printed a few out on heavy card stock. I made a trip to the hardware store in town and purchased a few pieces of 4x6 glass. I had a large roll of 1/4 inch copper tape (which you need to adhere the two pieces of glass together) left over from years ago when I was making wire wrapped glass pendants with slide glass. Note that I just used the term slide glass. Herein lies the key to my failed attempt at soldering for this project: 1/4 inch copper tape is fine for putting together 2 pieces of thin slide glass but NOT two pieces of much thicker plate glass. I simply did not take in to accounting the difference in the thickness of the glass and the width of the copper tape required. So when Breen sat down by my side and we started to melt the solder we soon realized that the 1/4 inch tape was not giving enough coverage for the solder to grab on to. We had to abort our mission.





It was a strange feeling writing up this project because for as much as I have never considered myself a perfectionist, I suppose I am. I learned something about myself in this project: mistakes are okay and actually a very necessary part of learning new things. I would love to be able to show you a perfect pair of beautifully soldered circus paper weights but it just didn't turn out that way. I still love the images of the Barnum and Bailey circus posters and I'm definitely going to get back to soldering them in to paper weights or over sized coasters once I can get my hands on wider copper tape at least 5/8 inches wide. As for the existing 1/4 inch copper tape? I'm off to buy some slide glass at the bead store and try my hand at those adorable little pendants that I love so much. The soldering part is actually fun. Just make sure you have all the correct supplies before starting any project and never give up if you make a mistake!

What did you learn this week?