Last night after we got home from a lovely birthday BBQ at our friend Liz’ house, which is always so fun, I decided to finally make another square linked bracelet, like the one I’d made in my soldering class. Here it is:

I’d been watching out for anything long and square that I could use as a mandrel (mandrel = something on which to shape / wrap wire or sheet metal) and finally decided to just wing it with my pliers.

I also realized I still had some links from my class that I hadn’t used, and a ton of already soldered jump rings, so the whole thing came together really fast.

Here is the new bracelet next to the old one (sans chainmaille).

After I snapped this, I put it in the pickle pot. The “pickle” is a highly acidic solution that removes oxidation (coloration) from precious metal. It’s usually heated to work faster My pickle pot is a little 1.5 qt crockpot.

Here it is after it came out of the pickle. It’s funny how it comes out completely white and matte, very unlike how you think of silver.

Then it was way way past bedtime. Next I need to finish it, which means sanding it down with finer & finer grit sand paper, a little polishing, and finally, a tumble with some stainless steel shot in my tumbler.

After that, I am not sure whether or not to put the same bits of chainmaille links in each square as the original, or some other element. We’ll see.

-amy