Making of seaglass chain bracelets

Apart from some big-gish and beautiful sea glass pieces, you’ll need: galvanized (zinc-coated, it’s important! it is grey and solders well) steel wire (about 0.8-1 mm), thin (0.4-0.6 mm) copper wire, wire cutter and pliers, lead-free solder, stained glass copper foil (5-6 mm), some stained glass flux, soldering iron at least 100 wt.

Instead of zinc-coated you can, of course, use copper wire of the same thickness. But you will need to cover all of it’s length with solder beforehand. And since lead-free solder is expensive…

Let’s start with some chain links. The size of them “dictated” for me the “lips” of my pliers:

…and repeat, and repeat. For toggle closure make a three-leaf figurine like that: side petals should be the same size as the links, but the bottom ones – much smaller, just to ensure fixing the detail to the chain.

Make sure it works:

Look how much links you need for bracelet, then add at least 4 more 🙂

Put the copper foil around the sides of your sea glass piece and burnish the foil well so it “hugs” the glass perfectly.

Repeat several times if you wish so.

Then it’s time to solder. Make sure you nave good ventilation and no kids or pets can touch work area (fumes from flux is the main danger, not solder even if it leaded). Better to use gloves. If you nad no such experience before, try to remember that small details get VERY hot VERY fast.

First you need to attach some “ears” to the sea glass piece. I do it with thin copper wire, make the loops twice so they are stronger. Cover all foil and wire with pretty thick layer of solder. Don’t forget to put flux on them first.

Then all that has left – to close all the chain links and the opening of the toggle with solder. Generous portion of flux and a bit of solder every time:

Then wash thoroughly with some dawn soap and a lot of warm water.

Or.. you can just buy one of mine 🙂

Here’s the video with all the processes:

Watch this video on YouTube.

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