I posted this on Sam's forum too. I have never
fabricated an overlaid and filligreed project before.
I severely underestimated the time it would take
to filligree this bridle set after overlaying the
flowers and scrolls. Consequently I did not earn
my desired pay rate on this set, however I did
gain the experience (positive outlook, haha!).
The cast flowers were provided by the customer.
On the square conchos, these flowers had to be
placed over the area to cover where the chicago
screws were soldered in place. The customer also
chose these placements. I am really looking forward
to doing another project involving these techniques
again but with complete control over the components
& design concepts.






Best regards,
Greg Pauline

Greg,
Once again I am in total awe of your work. Beautiful! I'm so glad to see you post more pictures. You work really inspires me. Thanks for sharing with us.

Stewart

Greg
You did a great job on that project. That would have taken me forever and it wouldn't have looked nearly as good. Thanks
Rod

That is beautiful. What an incredible amount of sawing. I can sure see the time sink. But absolutly beautiful....

Hey Greg

Just more proof of your unbelievable artistic talents and ability. Thanks for posting these. You are the Man.

_________________
Norm Harris, Jr.
"The outside of a Horse is good for the inside of a Man"

Very nice!
I was wondering when you mentioned the flowers over the top of the screws, how many different solders did you use?
Did you have to use one for the screw, one for the half round sides, and one for the floral overlay?

I have been using, I think 650 for my backs and then most of the time all the overlay is with Silvabrite. Most of this is on steel and I haven't lost any overlays, but was wondering what solders you used in this instance.

Every now and then, it would be nice to use 3 different temps, say in the instance of a buckle with the back, an overlay on top of that, but then a bead edge all the way around. With the buckle being domed, sometimes things slide around a bit.

I'm always looking for ways to speed up fabrication, so I can get to the fun part of engraving.

Edited to also ask: What did you use to clean with after soldering?

Thanks!

JB

Thank you all for your compliments, much appreciated!

I used a ton of saw blades to filligree this set. It really tested
my patience. I used just over 4 dozen blades. The overlay is
all 22 gauge. The base material for the buckles were 14 ga.,
keepers were 16 ga., tips were 20 ga., conchos and tee slide
were all 16 gauge. All have 10 gauge half round wire. Sterling
half round was soldered with 65% silver solder. Scrolls all
soldered with 56% silver solder. Chicago screws with 45%
silver solder. I rarely use staybrite solder for any of my projects
but in this case I applied staybrite to the flowers after having
engraved all the overlays. Next time I will silver solder these too.

After silver soldering I let it pickle in a pot of heated water and
sparex solution for 15-20 minutes. After soldering with staybrite, I
just run it through my heated ultrasonic for a couple of minutes.
Staybrite contaminates sparex and results in shading the silver a
pretty pink color (sarcasm). But it does not contaminate my ultrasonic.

Best regards,
Greg Pauline

Greg
Very, very nicely done. I know how tough it is to get them small scrolls and flowers all balanced in such small areas (and still have them look right after fillagree)- you definately pulled it off on this set, your scrolls are very nicely balanced and proportioned the way I like them!
I'm a big fan of smooth borders as well-look great!

Richard

Thanks for the info!
Every now and then, I have so many clamps in place, that using different temps of solder might make more sense.

On a side note, when doing overlay on steel, what solder do you use?

Thanks!

JB

JB~ I have not soldered silver to steel yet. When I finally do,
I will be searching for the posts on this forum to see how
others approach the task.

Richard~ Thank you for your compliment!

Best regards,
Greg Pauline

Greg,

A masterful job all the way around, design, silversmithing and engraving.
Thanks for sharing the photos and all the info.

Larry