Day 38 Making Round Beads or Balls

At some point in your soldering, you will want to make little silver beads or balls. This isn’t as easy as you might think. If you have tried this before, you might have gotten frustrated with deformed balls with flat sides and pits.

Well, I will try to help you get less frustrated. Start with silver wires cut the same length. You will have to experiment with different lengths to get different size balls. If you have Pure Silver as opposed to Sterling Silver this will work much better and give you less pits. (I used Sterling here) Melt the wires into balls on a Soldering Block. Use a little Handy Flux to help in this first stage. After this, the balls are not round and are fairly deformed.

Now you will want to make little “Divots” in your soldering board, or better yet, if you can find a Honeycomb Soldering Board made for melting balls. Use a bushy flame and melt the balls slowly, you don’t want to use flux this time. Once the ball starts to melt, slowly move the flame away and let it solidify slowly. (again, Pure Silver works better for this) I use my Mini Torch for this.

In this instance I am going to solder a post onto the balls and make earrings. I dip all the parts in a mixture of Denatured Alcohol and Powdered Boric Acid. I mix about a tablespoon of powdered boric acid to about 1 ounce of denatured alcohol. Then I solder a post onto the balls.

Next, polish and enjoy!

Have an awesome day and make sure to pause and enjoy it!

Doug