Soldering Project

Spring 2022

In my Three & Four Dimensional Media class, my very first assignment was to design a model/sculpture and create it by soldering copper wire together. This was a very open ended assignment that allowed us to express our creativity in any way we wished, the only requirement being that we use a minimum number of wire pieces.

As for the soldering, the copper came in very thin wires, so we had to take small bundles of them and twist them together to create thicker copper wire. We did this by clamping one end of the wire bundle in a bench vise and securing the other end in a drill. We used the drill’s torque to create a consistent, tightly wound wire that was comprised of many thin wires. This thicker wire is what we cut into pieces to solder together.

When I began brainstorming what to create, I started off with simple shapes. I discovered my love for triangles because they’re one of the strongest shapes alongside the circle, and they’re composed of three straight lines. I suppose I already knew that I loved triangles because I had previously made my logo for Ying’s Leather Things out of multiple triangles in the shape of a horse. For this project though, I decided to make a triangular pyramid out of four triangles and build another pyramid off the bottom of the first one to create a triangular bipyramid. This resembled somewhat of a gem shape, symmetrical and simple.

When building the bipyramid, I used a “helping hand” (small metal apparatus with adjustable arms and clips) to assist with holding the copper wires in position where they needed to be soldered. I also used malleable clay as another method of stabilizing the structure while I was soldering complicated joints. It is also handy to have a wet sponge to keep the tip of your soldering pen clean and shiny.

As I continued to build off my design, I decided to contrast the angular geometry and provide some “movement” to the structure by adding some curved arcs in a revolving pattern around each side of the bipyramid. I was able to use pliers to bend the copper wire into arcs, cut it to size, and hold the arcs in place while using the soldering pen with my other hand. Soldering flux was especially helpful because it allowed the metal to flow easily around the joints and I didn’t have to hassle with getting the soldering metal to transfer to the copper wire.