Here is a tip for soldering hinges! ⚒️🔥 from @willowandtwigg –

“A few of you asked how I kept the silver tube from moving when I was attaching the hinges for my final project book locket. My solution was simple – graphite pencil lead.

Not only does graphite not get affected by the heat of the torch, solder won’t flow over it either. This is why some jewellers use it to ‘dirty’ a seam to stop an existing join from coming undone.

I prefer to use yellow ochre paint for that particular task, but I do like graphite leads for holding tubing in place.

There’s nothing fancy about these; I just removed a few 0.7mm leads from a pencil I had on my desk and pushed as many as I could fit into the silver tube that I was using for the hinges.

After double checking the spacing and placement of them against the middle hinge on the opposite side of the pendant, I used a bit of Wolf Clay to hold them in place and soldered them on.”

Thank you so much Kelly for always sharing with us (your page is amazing!) I love this tip and the Wolf Clay brings it to the next level.

Keep those brilliant bench tips coming!

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