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Anybody that knows me knows that I don't like to do repairs. Problem is, I'm often the only goldsmith around who's crazy enough to take it on. Chalk this up to a pathological inability to say no, hubris, or an intense desire to be loved. In any case, I was given the task of re-attaching the pendant loop to this lovely antique seal. The shield is engraved in a triangular chunk of Cairngorm, a local form of quartz.
At first glance, it appeared that some mutt had attempted to soft-solder the loop to the pendant after some previous trauma, but on further investigation, the pendant is a thin, hollow shell of gold-plated brass, entirely filled with lead. This gives a relatively flimsy piece a bit more heft but makes it very risky to work on.
The pendant loop itself was added at some time in the past and is quite well done. And in actual gold, no less, which will make the rest of this ordeal much more pleasant.
After a couple sleepless nights of skull-work, I cleaned up the area where the loop would be attached. What we're going to do is build up a shouldered plug that will strengthen the area.
To this end, I cut a groove in the lead and made a gold plug to fit. This takes a fair degree of inside-out thinking to ensure that the plug will fit the hole accurately. In cases like this, I'll use a flat graver with parallel sides that I invented for just such situations, but a regular flat graver could be used as well, albeit carefully. Stuffing some Rodico into the hole will give you a better idea of the internal shape as you progress.
One crucial point to consider before embarking on such a project is that, in the environs of a goldsmith's bench, lead is poison. A tiny scrap of it on a piece of gold that is to be hard-soldered will eat into the metal and contaminate the whole area, so keep it in mind. Keep track of the tools you use and clean them carefully before going back to regular goldsmithing.
Once it fits all nicey-nice, with the shoulder of the plug flush to the surface, we need to consider the rest of the plug.
Not trusting in butt joints in such situations, I'll use a strip of metal folded over to hold the existing plug, shaping it to fit the space
Once both pieces fit, we'll solder them together. This method may seem outlandishly complex for such a piddly operation on a lead-filled piece of crap, but my basic principle is that, if it's going to be done, it's going to be done properly. This piece is very important to someone and deserves our respect. Not to worry, I charged enough for the job to ensure that I could spend the time necessary.
In this case, the two parts are soldered together with the hardest solder available as we want them to be, in essence, a single unit during the remainder of this operation.
Once soldered, the excess material is cut off and finished flat on top.
As much as I hate butt joins, this will be the strongest area of the whole pendant, so I'm fine with it. I wired the plug assembly into place to avoid the inevitable shifting that plagues butt joins. An embarrassing amount of solder was used to provide a strong transition from the old pendant loop to the new plug.
Here's where the real magic happens, although the pendant loop doesn't look like gold in this picture. Not sure what happened there. I've cleaned the excess solder out of the area and smoothed out the transition. A little graver work completes the transformation and we're ready to attach it to the main body of the piece.
Being a belt-and-suspenders kind of guy, I'm not going to depend on a simple glue joint, even with all the prep-work that I've done to make everything fit perfectly. Instead, I drilled through the area below the joint and then through the plug, preparatory to installing a nice solid rivet. The hole in the plug is drilled just a hair higher than the outer holes so that, as the slightly tapered rivet is inserted, it pulls the loop snugly into the hole.
This being a thin gold shell filled with lead, it occurred to me that I might simply heat up the new loop until it melted into the body of the pendant, but the mere thought of putting any heat to this pig filled me with dread, so I'm going to use some slow-setting clear epoxy instead. Not ideal or period-correct, but I need to sleep at night.
This is the way I left it on Saturday afternoon while the epoxy sets up. I like the slow-setting stuff because it seems to, I don't know, soak into the opposing surface better than the quick-set epoxy. Plus it doesn't stink quite as much.
And here we are Monday morning and it's just a matter of nipping off the ends of the rivet and shaping them with a whaddya call it, concave bur. After cleaning up the excess epoxy, a quick gold-plating to give it a uniform colour is all we can do. Gold-plating is not my favourite thing, as you may imagine, and it doesn't like to stick to lead, so we'll just do our best.
This whole project scared me somewhat because it would be so easy to end up destroying a beloved family heirloom if everything isn't done right.
I think I did it right.
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