I Survived!

Obviously :)

My house also survived my blowtorch experiments and I've not yet blown anything up, hurrah! Actually, the blowtorch is rather wondrous and lovely and soldering with it is super-easy, like a billion times easier than with the old ones. Because it gets hotter, so the solder melts quicker, see? It felt a bit unwieldy to start with, but by the end of the day I was merrily waving it around in my left hand so my right hand was free to poke hot things with tweezers. Yay! I have now been admiring my perfect little solder joins, and all helmets now have chinstraps and a little ring on top to dangle them. Oooh, and I soldered teeny tiny bolt rings onto fine chain with no problems either. I love my new blowtorch soooooo much! I may have mentioned that...

So, whilst initially the synchronised death of all my old equipment seemed like the end of the world, from a financial point of view especially, it turned out to be a good thing, as the new stuff is so much easier to use and saves much time and frustration.

I actually feel like a proper jeweller for the first time ever :)