Where Might I Find Sterling Silver Spheres (undrilled Beads)?
What you would be looking for is called shot and a jeweler can make it. Look around where you live for a jeweler who does a type of work called granulation. There are three common ways the shot can be made and it is solid not hollow. I have never seen a solid sphere that was hollow out of sterling but there may be some out there. I will do a little research when I get home tomorrow and see if I can find a source for you that would do mail or Internet orders. You may also be able to find it as a form of casting grain from a jewelry supply house but I have never seen it offered as spheres. Good luck and I will see what I can come up with for you tomorrow.
Spunk makes a good suggestion but she is missing a little bit of the process. You need a good charcoal block to prevent the shot from being covered in fire scale. Fire scale is a dense hard to remove black coating that forms when silver oxidizes during the melting process. In commercial jewelry production casting is done in a vacuum to eliminate or reduce fire scale. One of the ways to prevent oxidation is to use the right flame and gas mix and to make sure you have a reducing atmosphere around the silver. The charcoal does this by dispersing the oxygen. You can also use flux. If you do get fire scale you can use a pickle (acid solution) to remove the scale but anytime you are using acids you have some danger involved and the process gets more and more complicated. You can also use a can and ground up charcoal to make shot. You clip the wire you want to use into small pieces the weight of the shot you want to produce. (The larger the pieces of silver the more heat and care you will need to make the process work. Make a layer of finely ground charcoal in the bottom of the can place a few pieces s of the cut wire and another layer of charcoal on top then some more pieces of wire and charcoal for a few layers. Then you heat the can and contents just past the melting point of the silver wait a few minutes and then you can either cool it in water or just let it cool naturally. After it is cool separate the shot and charcoal (if you used water to cool the shot the charcoal would of floated to the top leaving the shot at the bottom of the can). The reason I suggested finding a jeweler near you was to avoid the trial and error of the process as well as the expense of getting the equipment and the safety issues involved. I was not able to find anyone who carried the silver shot but I am still looking.
October 16th, 2009 at 4:43 am
Undrilled? Maybe try buying Airsoft BB’s.
October 16th, 2009 at 8:54 am
his web site shows silver shot on a project, but it is made from silver solder and the soldering iron. Serch here more thoroughly for clues to the where from….
hgtv.com/hgtv/…/article/0,1789,HGTV_…
but I beleive it must be made and is not readily availab le.
October 16th, 2009 at 1:10 pm
If you’re a do it yourselfer you can probably make them. You’ll need some sterling wire (bigger gauge for bigger spheres) and a torch. Hold the tip of the wire in the torch flame until it goes all melty. If you wait long enough, the drop should fall off, but you’ll want a fireproof surface underneath, preferably something curved so they don’t flatten out (or you can just cut it off and file it down). Or, alternatively, you could try cutting little snippets of wire and heating them up–I know silver wire solder balls right up. Experiment with copper first, since it’s a lot cheaper. This will also work better for smaller guage wire. (I wouldn’t try it with anything much bigger than 14G, and that would be pushing it.)