Silver soldering & Jewellery repairs

[Lee]

This topic was started in the "do you sell topic" I have pulled these quotes rather than splitting the topic!

 

do you repair jewelry ?

 

Brought myself a soldering iron a few months back, some silver solder & spend hours watching you tube, Last week I soldered the handle back on a silver cup so this is going to be a question more & more of us get asked.

 

how much did it set you back Lee? how did it go? I've been thinking about getting one, as I get quite a few handle repair jobs that I have to send away.

 

I originally brought one of these for small jewellery repairs, but found on the cup the heat was two concentrated so I used a burner I’ve had in my garage for years, as it offered a wider heat. It took me ages to get right, due to inexperience but once filed & cleaned it came out OK.

 

As for smaller jewellery soldering I’m still learning & although beginning to get confident I still haven’t done a “professional” job as I am still developing my skills!

 

 

How about a link to the youTube vid Lee,

 

There are thousands out there Hugh, but I found a you tube search for “silver soldering” “Soldering jewellery” & “Silver jewelry” brought up all the answers I needed for my entry level research!

 

Also have a look at these videos Particularly the named “How to Solder a Simple Bail” as this explains fire coating & paste solder.

 

Most of the items you need can be brought from h.s.Walsh including solder paste

I’m NO EXPERT! Purely at the “beginner” stage, But I’m confident it will only be a couple of months before I am ready to offer this as a service to my customers.

 

So are there any experts in this field amongst us who can offer some advice to us all?

 

Lee

[discodave]

apparently the jewelery repair trade takes about 200 million pounds a year in the uk,

 

in case people were wondering if its worthwhile, if you then divide that by 60 odd million people call it 3 quid a head then divide by the population of your catchment area or even just your regular customers you will get a rough idea of takings that are potentially available if you get this service right,

 

this also enables you to start selling the rings as well if you can resize a ring within half an hour for the customer you will sell quite a lot and you dont need a lot of stock im not sure how many jewelers even offer this service while you wait, if their engaving service is a weeks wait how long will their repair jobs take im going to phone them all and find out

 

will be interesting to see how much competition is really out there, although i believe timpson has already done the research for us

 

i cant remember what shoe repairing takes does anyone have a price breakdown of the various services that we offer for the uk?,

 

was also cosidering embroidery in me new shop would compliment the engraving perfectly.

[Gray]

Embroidery????? What blanket stitch and cross stitch and that.

[discodave]

well ive just spent about an hour doing a nice lil post then this site decided that i had to be logged out once i pressed the submit button oh well nevermind

[discodave]

ok ill post it again remembering to copy =D> as i submit this message this time, i have been thinking about this for a while now!

 

ive always thought doing shoe repairing almost held the shop back in a loose sort of way!!

 

the perception hasnt really gone away from the quick heel bars, i still see independents advertising heels in 3 mins and soles in 7 minutes (why on earth would you want to advertise the fact that you are about to rush somebodies shoes with a knife and machinery that cuts and scours sh#t) there must be a per centage of people who will only use our shops for shoes and keys, but taking their branded watches and jewelery into a dusty old shop unit isnt the first place they would choose, i guess they would rather take them to a jewelers and have the idea that it takes a while to do because of the process involved and that they are looking after the customers goods i get the idea that we are only there as a last minute rush job cant remember the difference between my engraving figure at different times of the year and i know people are getting more goods at that time of the year but is it because jewelers cant take the engraving in just before xmas im not sure id be able to tell unless i actually removed the shoes and raised the image of my new style shop surely people would come and buy a great deal more if the shop was selling jewelery repairing it and also engraving it how professional would that look to the public choosing where to spend their hard earned.

 

always thought the way forward is engraving, watch repair and keys, now jewelery repair and embroidery offer the income to replace the shoes, the other services, once the image of the quick turnaround and dusty shop enviroment are removed should imo take our shops forward with increased sales in all our other areas, these will rise purely out of the new image that we are installing into the customers head and the better profit lines that they bring as we improve our shops, id rather sell a 50 quid ring that takes me 2-5 minutes to adjust and get away from a dirty pair of shoes that the customer wants to pay 2 and hapenny for a job that comes with the bonus of selling a tin of polish or a new pair of laces , plus being lucky enough to breathe in whatever the customer has trod in in the last 10 minutes (who knows what chemicals we now breathe in just so the chinese can knock out cheap shoes).

 

how many tshirts, rings and whatever else todo with these 2 new services will you need to sell to cover the shoe repair fall ,the new machines are collecively worth the same if not cheaper than shoe repair machines. we already have a customer base that will take us thru the bottom of the s curve which all of our business are going to be subjected to whether we removed the shoe repairs or not.

 

why remove shoe repairs when we are all doing ok at them,the idea that repairs are still taking enough money to sustain our way of living is possibly flawed!! how many shoe repair shops have closed between the last 2 stilleto booms 50%? and shoe repairing is still falling in most of our shops even thou there's less competition and more shoes being sold , now this isnt rocket science.

there will always be people repairing shoes and if half of us were to diversify into removing shoes then the other half would naturally benefit.

 

id love to know peoples thoughts on this, just for the sake of working in a cleaner enviroment and not having the risk of cutting or scouring my poxy nails and hands off when a trainee bumps into me would be a carrott on its own,

[Gray]

So which half of us do you suggest diversifies into removing shoe repairs? You or me? If it's me and you gain all my repairs who does that benefit? Dust extracton in machinery has come a long way. Timpsons manage to combine everything in their shops and they don't look to dusty. It's a long time since I have cut myself or scoured my nails and hands. You learn to be careful. It doesn't matter how little the shoe repairs are, at the end of the week its all part of the takings. So no I won't be giving up repairs, besides I enjoy it.

[discodave]

yep im really considering it, i understand that 1 person has to make that jump before the big boys chuck their cash at it, 1 shop and no customers is a big risk or at least a calculated one, ive literally just got my floor plan back for my next shop and since ive wrote my thoughts out im thinking it could be worth a go if it goes wrong i stick shoe repairing in there and no real damage done just another learning curve for me,

 

basically this is a possible biz plan there is no reason it wont work as long as i give out a good job am polite and my shop is smart as, a shop with a bit of wow,

we are all from different generations so the younger among us see things a little different to our peers, i would imagine 99% of repairers on here over the age of 50 years would never dream of removing shoes and id also imagine that almost none of us will take that first step, unless you see 10 shops spring up all of a sudden

 

its going to take a whole lot of learning but the reason i lost interest in my last shop was becos i had stopped learning i was earning enough money not to have to worry about learning new tricks but then money runs out if youve got none coming in,

 

the only problem with these thoughts are? can i do this from scratch, with no customers at all just a good location and an innovative shop fit, do i sacrifice a certain amount of money that i assume my shop will take, in order to have a real crack at this trade?

[windycity]

good points discodave, were you also known as hollywood once?

[discodave]

might of been

[StevenB]

I'm sure we all look at what we're doing from time to time & wonder what to change next.

I've considered the possibility of dropping repairs in the past, but decided that though I do a good trade on trophies & engraving, if I dropped shoes, key cutting on its own would then seem a bit odd in a trophy shop - and I'm certainly not going to turn away the income from my key bench.

It's good to keep on your toes, though & keep reviewing what you're up to & how it's all doing!

[windycity]

disco dave are you the hollywood who goes to sweden for a haircut

if so what you up to these days and do still catch up with the chaps ffom services

[discodave]

went new zealand for me haircut instead, whose kemp services? dont see anyone anymore

 

do i know you from slough paul?

[windycity]

hey dave

yeah that time seems like 30 years ago

[discodave]

yeah fcuk still in your dads shop, do you still talk to anyone

[windycity]

dave check your pm's/messages

[Hugh-Candoit (ENG)]

Interesting posts discodave.

If I had to start up back into the trade again I would seriously think of letting the repair side be carried out on Franchise or farm it out. I would however have a Patcher in the shop.

Too busy repairing shoes means you miss out on the time for new ventures, get someone else to do the hard graft at their risk not yours, you take the cream off the top.