Street - moving along

The Street project is having to move fast.  I made a brooch back from square wire - at first I made two pieces from 1.5 wire, but then decided it was a bit flimsy to hold the pieces.  I made another shape in 2mm wire, and this seemed much more what I wanted.

Decided on a fairly complex shape with a lot of angles.. however, using a mitre jig makes this a lot easier to manage.

Here he is - we call him Magic Mike.  And he is!

I was soon into my favourite part - arranging the pieces together.

I kept seeing more objects that could be developed into more elements for the project, but already felt I had too many! 

At the point when I thought I had my design fairly fixed I started moving on to adding pieces to hold the enamel.  I decided to solder a piece of sheet silver to the wire as a platform for my prongs to sit on.  I had made the holes quite small in the enamel piece, so only 0.7mm wire would go through.

In my first attempt at soldering the sheet silver to the wire, I melted two of the solder joins in the wire - knocking the angle out and making the sheet the wrong shape.  Another join had gone out of true on the other side.  I had to heat this again and push the wires flat on a fireproof block.

I had been trying to solder it this way up (above).

My solution was to cut another sheet, and solder it the other side up, with honeycomb blocks supporting the wire.  I painted all of the solder joins with rouge to prevent them from melting.  It worked!