Sweet

Last week I broke down and sprung for a Benchmate. For those of you who are not familiar. Benchmate is a tool system made by GRS that has interchangeable components. One of the nice features is its inside ring holder. I have been setting a lot of stones lately and it will make my life a lot easier. Here is a picture.

This is a practice setting that I had on bench. In the back ground you can see two additional ring holders. The one on the left goes with the Benchmate, it is very similar to the ring holder that I was using, also made by GRS, it is on the right with the gold knob on the end. The Benchmate also came with a bench pin (not shown) but I will probably keep using my old bench pin.

Been a while.

It's been a while since I posted. Those of you who know me, know last year was not a fun one around the Eslinger house. Anyway, it's a new year now and hopefully, I will be able to keep up with my blogging. The last time I posted I wrote about an article that was accepted by a magazine. The article is done and at the publisher. It is scheduled to be published in March of 2012! I will write more once they pay me but in the mean time here is a picture of the ring I did for the article.

I had a hard time photographing it. Hopefully the pro's at the magazine can do it more justice. I am currently in the process of carving waxes for alternative designs of the same basic ring.

Accepted!

I am very excited; I got an email, from the publisher that I submitted the magazine article to, saying that they want to publish my article. I have been published before, but that was for my woodcarving and they where short articles that they wrote. This is a full fledged article for advanced techniques; wax carving and finishing of cast rings. My original proposal was for casting also, but they did not accept that part and instead will run an article on sending work out to be cast.

Grand Finally

OK, so it has been a while since I have posted. Here is a partial why...I volunteered to head up a collaborative sculpture project for the Downtown Highland Park Coalition (kind of like a chamber of commerce for the downtown merchants in Highland Park, IL), to promote their 4th of July fireworks show. My thought was that I would put in a few hours coordinating and another couple of hours spinning a base for it, out of copper.

Well...about 80 hours later we finished. That is, about 80 hours of my time. I figure there is at least a couple of hundred man hours in it. We had six of my students, five of their kids and two other instructors working on it. It was a lot of work but all-in-all, I think it was a positive experience.

Here is a not so great picture of the finished sculpture which is now on display downtown Highland Park, IL (in front of the old Border's store).

Keum-boo

These are some keum-boo earrings that I demonstrated during class. The trillion shape is one of my favorites as is the squiggle. I colored the sterling with liver of sulfur.

Spiculums

Here are a couple of copper spiculums that I demostrated during class. The enamelled one I did a long time ago when I was first learing to enamel. I like it really well. My plan was to make enough for a neckless of graduated sizes. One of my many unfinished projects.

Tube Setting

These are some simple tube set rings that I have been playing with. I am trying to develop an easy project that students could do in a one day class. While I like these, the project is not quite easy enough. The tube is a bit wider than the ring shank and I have to carefully fit each tube to the shape of the "Crazy 8" wire. The result is pretty cool looking but not easy enough for beginning students. I have some more ideas to try and will post pictures of them when they are done.