intrex Posted January 28, 2014 Share Posted January 28, 2014 I am planning to make a twisted metal (copper, silver, brass) necklace for my wife's valentine present. I forged a twisted steel rod bracelet last week that turned out great and wanted to make a nicer necklace to match. The plan is to use 7 pieces of 12 gauge wire (2 silver, 2 brass, 3 copper) and twist them all together like the bracelet. I am hoping the metals are all close enough in melting point for this to work. Putting these into the forge seems like a recipe for an expensive disaster and I don't have an oxy torch so I am planning to use my cheap map-pro torch. I used for a small copper project a few months ago and it worked fairly well. The silver wire for this is going to be pretty pricey so I want to make sure to get this right the first time. Have you all done anything like this before? Got any tips or things to watch out for so I don't ruin $100 worth of silver :)? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chinobi Posted January 28, 2014 Share Posted January 28, 2014 I gotta ask what you are attempting to utilize the melting for. iv done this with less wires, I think it was 1 copper 1 brass(both 12 gauge) and a much thinner pair of pre-twisted nickel in the groove between them. I melted the ends together to keep it from unraveling and give it a uniform-ish mass at the ends that could be polished smooth. im not sure your mapp torch will be able to fuse the ends of that much mass, mine has had trouble getting 4x12 gauge copper's to fuse, so 7 might be ambitious. if you have some extra wire substitute your silver for copper and do a test piece with 2 brass/5 copper and see if you can get that to work, doesn't need to be full length either, 4 or 5 inches should probably be long enough to behave similarly to the real deal. conversely, you could silver solder the ends together, rather than attempting to fuse them (if indeed that's what you intend). or go back over it with, say, 18-20 gauge wire of whatever metal you prefer and to a wire wrapped end. provide a little more detail as to the process you are shooting for and we will be able to provide much better suggestions with less speculation :) looks like an interesting (if heavy!) project. look up Mokume Gane and use that to make the matching rings and earrings, gift ideas for the next 2 or 3 years! you can make mokume with wire as well if you are so inclined, loooot of options with mixed metals :) Good luck! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bigfootnampa Posted January 28, 2014 Share Posted January 28, 2014 The brass will melt out LONG before the copper or silver! I have tried similar MANY times with minuscule success! Forge them together warm would be your best bet I think! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
intrex Posted January 28, 2014 Author Share Posted January 28, 2014 I am not sure what to do with the ends. With the steel twisted rods it was so hard that you didn't need to worry about the end uraveling and all I did was cut the freyed ends and then round and smooth the cut. I could easily put the ends into the forge and then try to just flatten or ball the wires together. I haven't tried to do anything like that yet and am kind of worried about trying it on this. I may just get extra wire than I need and see what happens when they are hammered together red hot. Maybe just heating back an inch from the end and then twisting untill the wires break would be a decent seal for the twist? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chinobi Posted January 28, 2014 Share Posted January 28, 2014 were it my project (either one) I would be concerned about one of those wire ends getting bumped loose and then starting to snag on clothing or hair if they were not somehow merged or controlled. you could get a copper pipe end cap and install them on the ends, or make one from some copper (or brass/silver/nickel) sheet and solder it to the end. I would advise against heating the collection to red or showing color and forging, that's usually a recipe for cracked sterling silver. you can always abuse the lower melting point of the brass to suit your ends. leave the brass wires a little longer than the rest and fold them back onto the outside of the main coil, maybe wrap them around the end to promote better coverage. flux it up pretty heavily and heat the end as locally as you can with the intent to melt the brass into the twisted coil without heating so far up as to melt out the brass wires away from the immediate end. once that has cooled to black you could try forging it down, or just cool, pickle, rinse well and file the ends to whatever shape and polish pleases you. humor me, how wide is your total 7 wire twist? I keep thinking its bigger than it is but I just drew it out on the computer and its only about 1/4" diameter (using 12 gauge = 0.08" dia), does that about match what you have? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rich Hale Posted January 28, 2014 Share Posted January 28, 2014 You know that some metals turn skin green when in contact? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
intrex Posted January 28, 2014 Author Share Posted January 28, 2014 Hey Chinobi, The bracelet was actually using 11 guage steel wire (I think) but I can't for the life of me seem to find 11guage silver so I thought 12 would be close enough that she wouldn't notice :). The bracelet is about 3/8" at the thinest part I could find and about 1/2" at the thickest. After talking this through I am deffinitely going to get extra wire and try a few different ways to seal off the end to see what will work. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
intrex Posted January 28, 2014 Author Share Posted January 28, 2014 Hey Rich, Thanks for the Tip. I used a specific jewelry grade finish on the last pure coper piece that I did. It was a large flat braclet and the finish made that wearable for more than 8 hours straight without any green skin. I am hoping that the copper and brass being twisted and intermingled with silver won't have enough skin and oil contact to make the skin green. The plan is not to finish it with anything but I guess that is what will happen if she gets a big green ring around the neck. That will be pretty good for a laugh if it happens :). Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
thingmaker3 Posted January 29, 2014 Share Posted January 29, 2014 If it were me, I'd use a jeweler's saw to flush off the ends after twisting & bending, then hard-solder on a couple silver disks. What's another $10 or $20 on top of what you've already got? (If you've never used hard-solder, practice on all-brass test pieces first. You've got a couple hundred degrees farenheight leeway.) I don't think twisting the ends until they come off would make a very aesthetic piece. I'm not sure there would be any structural advantage there either. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
intrex Posted January 30, 2014 Author Share Posted January 30, 2014 I finally have everything ordered and on the way. It is going to end up being 4 silver rods and 3 copper rods with an end cap to solder on. Do you all have any suggestions for hard solder? From what I have been reading it seems like I should be able to melt hard silver solder with my map pro torch. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chinobi Posted January 30, 2014 Share Posted January 30, 2014 you should be just fine with that torch. sand the ends of the wires very well beforehand and try to limit how much you touch them with your hands afterwards (wash your hands with non moisturizing unscented soap, or wear latex gloves if you really need to get up into it), clean metal is a must for solder to flow with the least amount of trouble, and flux is your friend. look up basket twists and cable Damascus for more tips and tricks for cleaning and managing twisted strand type projects if you are so inclined. make sure you end up with one of the copper wires as the core strand too, no sense putting silver where it wont be seen :P if you use iron binding wire to keep the ends together while you solder them make VERY sure you get it all off and file out any bits that may have gotten soldered in accidently. when you pickle sterling and iron is introduced into the mix it will electroplate a fine layer of copper onto all the exposed silver, basically turning them a light pink color that then has to be sanded or buffed off. not so bad on a flat or simple project, but a colossal pain on twisted wire! good luck :) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
intrex Posted February 25, 2014 Author Share Posted February 25, 2014 Thanks for all of the help everyone, I finally got this all finished and like usual it was a little bit of a journey but everything turned out well. I tried to make some decorative clasps out of a copper pipe and some of the left over silver wire. The clasps looked great but I was unable to successfully weld them to the necklace. In the end I just flattened out two of the left over wires and then wrapped them around the end of necklace and heated each end until they just became molten. This completely fused the ends of the necklace together with the crude claps. Polishing the necklace and creating the claps was by far the most time intensive piece of the whole project. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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