Monday, January 30, 2012

Learning From My Mistakes!

After making the pendant in the previous post I thought it was worth a repeat. It's always good to make something several times. I'm glad I did, too. I discovered a better sequence for my soldering. I used to solder the center silver disc last while holding the pendant by the bail. I knew this could be a problem if I wasn't fast enough with my soldering. Guess what...I wasn't,  and the piece fell apart and I was left holding nothing but the bail in my tweezers and the disc still wasn't soldered in place and my gallery wire broke off!
Since I was forced to basically begin again I could rethink my sequence- which I needed to do! so- Where to put the solder? Initially, I put paste solder along the disc and pushed it in place and soldered it, but since the disc wasn't soldered I had to rethink it. The second time I put the paste solder in the copper piece and then pressed the disc in place. This time, rather than have the paste squish out on top, it went inside the ring, where it needed to be.  This was now my first solder (after soldering in my little heart in the center of the disc). My second solder was the gallery wire and then the bail. MUCH better!!

This is why I try not to get too bent out of shape when things screw up. I might actually learn something from my mistakes!!

1 comment:

Nanna said...

Love it!! and that is just how I feel "learn from your mistakes!!