I sent an e-mail directly to Jay, recommending the use of copper,
brass, and nickel-silver. But I was disappointed in some of the
on-line responses recommending silver instead. For example,
more rewarding, since they can clearly see that they are making
"real" jewelry.
Gee, Doug, and all these years I have been making and selling
base-metal jewelry, I thought it was “real” (and so do my many
customers). It may not be expensive, but it is so much fun to
experiment with and to wear. Brass is not gold, but on the other
hand, I don’t have to keep my jewelry (or my raw materials) locked
away.
Brass is a mixture of 2 metals and although you are looking for
the color it is not as easy to work with.
To the contrary, I find brass as easy to work with as sterling
silver, and it is much simpler to anneal than sterling. I don’t
have the fire-scale problem, either. Nor do I have to collect my
filings.
I certainly didn't like the OK gold solder ...I found [brass]
tarnished more rapidly than the silver and once tarnished was a
pain to clean.
The solder color is a problem. I’ve commented on this issue many
times already on Orchid (ditto, on the matter of keeping base
metals clean) and won’t repeat things here. Silver solders work
nicely on brass, but they do show up in the finished piece, as Kay
observed.
Nickel-silver is definitely a little harder to work with than either
brass or sterling, since it is intrinsically stiffer. It looks
reasonably nice when polished, but in the end does not have that
wonderful “glow” that sterling has. On the other hand, a 20-gauge
bracelet blank (1.5 x 6") @ 16=A2 per square inch costs $1.44 in
nickel-silver (less, in either brass or copper), whereas the same
in sterling would be somewhere in vicinity of $17 (if my math is
correct, and more, when you include postage, etc. This is one of
the reasons I start my students off using base metal and, once they
have acquired the basic skills, they can decide when/whether they
want to switch to silver or gold. Tiny pieces of jewelry in silver
are not expensive, but if you like larger things (as I do), the
cost difference becomes much more significant.
I still recommend starting with brass and copper.
Peace,
Judy Bjorkman