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I’m here with Mark Nelson hi mark thank you and today we are talking about recycling and Mark you have a great technique for taking that old component and this actually rings from a necklace that you made a few seasons ago right sure is uh-huh so you’re taking these little guys and attaching them together I saw them all together and make a ring okay so giving some new life to old components on a try all right so what do we do we can start with the link and since we’re gonna solder them together like that what we need to do is make a flat spot so that they have a good sure they can join right so.

I’m going to take that ringing in a minute just take a file and all you need to do is just file a little flat spot mm-hmm like that and you ain’t trying to make it directly opposite so this particular link here is neat because it has big dots so it’s really clear so I can come over to the other dot and I know that that’s where my other flat spots coming okay now this is kind of a labor-intensive project so we’re going to show viewers how to do part of it this week and then they can come back next week and see the rest right you sure yeah okay and so now we got a flat spot we’re gonna solder and I’m gonna do what they call sweat soldering okay what does that mean that means I’m gonna actually flow some solder on there mm-hmm and not actually attach anything to it right now this is it makes it soldering job a lot easier and you’ll need to use the Sutter because it’s sterling silver right okay and because it is sterling you also need a what they call it barrier flex and this is a flux that protects the entire piece mm-hmm so you’re just brushing it on with the paintbrush supression it on mm-hmm.

I’m also using a little bit of what I call flow flux this is a flex allows the solder to actually flow mm-hmm safety glasses safety first and then I am going to use a little torch oxygen propane and I can get the flame that I like on there okay and I’m going to use easy solder easy solder will flow to a lower temperature and it will also take the shaping a lot easier so we heat that up you won’t get the flow okay see that yeah and so then once you have your solder you bring in the other piece you already have some linked together here.

I already have some linked together hmm and so I can just take this line and another thing but those nice little dots you can always match him up mm-hmm but this is sterling too so I need to protect this okay all right and so with the sterling rings would you just determine the number based on the width of the ring that you want to make or the size yes okay right you know the size of the ring will do the width and the overall size of the ring like this five rings here give you about a size six okay okay but that’s size six is really really loose you can change that really so I bet you’re going to show us how to do that later I hope yes so what we need to do now is we go ahead and heat this up and as it gets heated up.

I’ll give it a little slight push and what’s happening there with the color the color you see a lot of that Bluegreen is actually the alcohol from the barrier flux mm-hmm see it flow yeah so those two pieces are all now soldered together Wow so it’s all one solid piece one solid piece so is this a really hot is this gonna be really hot now you need to be careful you certainly will be high it’s about 1,100 degrees okay let’s just put it in some water and mm-hmm we’ll let that sit for just about a minute or two mm-hmm and when we bring it out we can actually start forming it and you’ll do that with the mandrel a ring mandrel right okay and a ring mandrel is really handy because you can determine your size some people might not be familiar with what it is but it’s like a ruler basically for the graduated sizing of rings right so we can see that the different sizes are on here just like a ruler and let’s say if I want to size 6.

I can start bending at that size mm-hmm so this is you’re attaching it now with a vice I’m gonna put in a vise because that way it’s a lot easier to hold otherwise it can be kind of cumbersome mm-hmm any neat thing about this is that you can go ahead and just go hmm I’m gonna be you’re about here mm-hmm and you start pushing now you do have to push kind of gently and slowly so you’re not are you a little bit concerned you don’t want to break that soldered point exactly okay so I’m just going to start by using my hands and can you hand me that the dead blow hammer again once I’ve done most of it with my fingers.

I can actually come in and start maybe it has a larger size mm-hmm because you don’t want over stress like you said overstress the seams okay and get them to break so we’ll just keep doing that and we’ll form it I like to form I’m right-handed so I form on the right hand side and then I flip it over and then do the other side so you’re giving it nice even pressure all the way around right and I’ll keep doing that mm-hmm and then I’ll get to this stage mm-hmm and there again just keep on doing I might move down to a smaller radius and then I’ll just keep going well I’m gonna have to stop you there mark we’ll see us next week okay love this project and it’s just another great way to do recycling in your own studio thank you so much you’re welcome we’ll be right back with more information about recycling metal.