1. Advanced Scroll Ring

2. Designing the ring Decide on your pattern. You can do one from the previous slide, or you can come up with your own design. Determine your size. Use a piece of tag board to determine how long your finished ring band needs to be. Remember that the tag board needs to be about a half size longer than your desired size, because the ring compresses when you bend it around. Estimate how much wire you’ll need. You can use your wire practice pieces as a guide, or you can make a couple nickel silver practice components and figure it out from there. Buy 16 or 18 gauge round sterling or nickel silver wire. You need to use nickel silver if you haven’t paid your fee yet. If you are using sterling silver, you may want to bend a practice ring to see how much metal you’ll need.

3. Making the band Make all of your components. Lay out your components on top of your tag board. Make any adjustments needed so that your components are the right length. If you are making a style with a long flat band as shown below, you can leave the band a little long and cut it to the correct length later.

4. File the components File the ends where your components come together. They need to be very flat to solder securely. Less than flat solder joints tend to break when bent later.

5. Solder the band Flux and lay your components on a black block. You can put the solder either on top of or underneath the solder joints. Try to do as many as possible at one time. USE MEDIUM OR HARD SOLDER. If any joints don’t solder, pickle or sand and try again, still using medium solder. Pickle, rinse, and dry your band.

6. Bend the ring Wrap the band around the mandrel about a size smaller than your desired size. Slide up the mandrel to reach your size. Make any final adjustments to the twists and turns so that you have the correct size. File the end very flat where you will solder.

7. Antiflux your previous solder joints Very neatly apply antiflux to the pervious solder joints on your ring, using a toothpick. It is stored in the solder supplies box. Antiflux prevents areas from heating up, so be sure it does not touch where you will be soldering. This will protect your previous solder joints from coming apart when you solder the last one. Let antiflux dry fully before preparing to solder.

8. Solder the ring together Flux the joint, then position the ring in a third hand, with the area you want to solder facing down. Add the solder. USE EASY OR EXTRA EASY SOLDER. Solder using the little torch until you see the solder flow. Quench, pickle, rinse, and dry. A third hand is a weighted base that holds a pair of locking tweezers. It is used to hold your pieces in a particular position when soldering.

9. Round the ring Round ring on a mandrel. If your ring is a bit tight, you can put it on the ring mandrel and pound it with a rawhide mallet until it fits well. If your ring is very tight, you can use a small metal hammer. This will stretch the ring very quickly, but will also flatten your wire, slightly changing the shape.

10. Buff your ring Buff using the small muslin buff on a flex shaft, or you may use the red rouge only on the blue buffer if you’re really brave and careful. Be sure you angle the narrow end of the wooden mandrel toward the buffing wheel so your ring doesn’t fly off.

11. For the ring with 4 pieces: Lay your four pieces side by side. About 2” should be fully touching and ready to solder, and the rest should not be touching at all. Don’t even think of attempting this ring unless you are a patient and detailed perfectionist!

12. Make band Solder the pieces together. You may need to solder more than once to get them all where you want them.

13. Make the band look like one flat piece of metal Flatten the pieces with a metal hammer on the anvil to create one band. Sand the top and bottom of the band. File and sand the end.

14. Bend Ring Bend ring band to your correct size. Individually pound, file, and spiral each piece. File scrolls where they will be soldered together.

15. Complete the Ring Notice how all the scrolls are soldered together for stability Follow the rest of the previous directions for antifluxing, soldering, and finishing your project. Thanks to Emily Boysen for sharing!