Having fun!

I have been having a lot of fun working with the old steel and sapphires we found last fall. Concepts have been flowing out of me so fast I can hardly keep up with sketches. Ok, that's an exaggeration but I do have a few ideas in mind.

The other day, when I was working out a design for a channel set ring, I got so excited about a steel pendant idea; I had to stop working on the ring and make the pendant.

I started with a really old piece of rusty wire.
When I forged the wire it wound up with a slight serpentine shape which I really liked, so I decided to mimic it in the setting. I drilled holes to clear out the bulk of the metal for the channel then used a saw and files to remove the rest.

Next I cut some 14k yellow gold sheet, to use for the bezel, and soldered it in place with easy 14k solder.

I had a scrapped, 14k gold, hoop earring; that I cut a short section out of to use as a bail. After melting two of these I decided it was just too thin of a gage (30) to solder to steel. I then set out to make the bail out of sheet. Tubes are pretty easy and I had it made and soldered in no time. Bending it proved to be a different story. Since it was so short the spring bending technique did not work and I did not have the right size music wire to use as a bending mandrel. So...I had to design and make a bending jig.

It worked ok but took me some time to work the kinks out. It turns out (I think) the channel needs to be deeper than just half of the cross section of the tube. More like a U shape. I did practice with some copper but finally decided to just go for it. It wasn't perfect (probably because my hand cut channels (I used a ball burr) had a couple of wobbles in them. So, I found a piece of wire that matched the inside diameter of the tube exactly (in this case a coat hanger) and bent it into and arch to use as a mandrel. I inserted this in the tube as far as it would go and used a polished hammer to coax it into shape so I could slide the mandrel in further. I repeated these steps until the mandrel was fully inside the tube. I then plannished out the remaining flaws and removed the mandrel.

Lessons learned:
- make sure the bezel is completely soldered. If you look closely at the upper right side of the channel, you can see where the bezel is pulled away from it (actually I relearned this...bad Pixie, you know better. In fact you would have made your students redo it.)
- 30 gage gold may be to thin to successfully solder to steel. Someday I might do some more experimentation with this but for now I plan to steer away from it (it was really to thin for a bail anyway, I was just to lazy to make the tube).
- don't be cheap. I tried to save cost and made the bezel too short. In the long run it would have been a lot cheaper to make the bezel another .25 mm taller than to struggle getting the stones tight in the setting.
- use a higher karat gold for bezel setting. The 14ky that I used was really hard to move. First I tried using my favorite setting method that I use for silver bezels; a brass punch and a chasing hammer. When the gold would not budge I switched to a mild steel punch in a hammer handpiece. This helped but I was constantly resharpening it. Finally, I switched to a stainless steel punch and got the job done...sorta' (I really could of used that extra .25 mm of bezel height).

He's-a-back

After a two year break, my husband is finally back to wood turning. He does beautiful work and it's nice having him around the studio.

He's-a-back

Bead Chain

I tried using the hot dip method of torch firing on some stainless steel bead chain. My thought was the enamel would not go inside the beads and the chain would remain flexible.

For the most part it worked, but I need to get some different enamel, with the correct coefficient of expansion for stainless. As you can see in the photo, most of the enamel came off as it cooled. I think it looks cool anyway.

Torch fired

Last week I tried out some of the techniques described in Barbara Lewis' book torch-fired enamel jewelry. I had a rocky start because did not pay close enough attention to what she said about the type of gas and torch to use.

While I like the funky, somewhat, unpredictable results of the technique; which consists of dipping or rolling hot steel findings in enamel...I found the process tedious and lacking creative challenge. Once I fired a bunch of the store bought components and some home made head pins, I found assembly to be an equally unrewarding task in which you almost can't go wrong.

For me, the fun part was in the final product. Here is what I made...

Bead set

Here are the finished horseshoe earrings. I think the settings turned out pretty good considering this is only the second time I have done bead setting.

The first earring went fine. The top of the stone's girdle was even with the surface of the metal. I used number 52 round graver to cut burrs which would act like prongs. The graver glided through the metal easily and lifting it towards the end of the cut; brought the burr up over the stone. After cutting each burr I used a small beading tool to round them off.

The second earring was a bit of a challenge. I had not paid close enough attention to which stone went in which earring. Despite using machine cut stones, the stone that was left would not fit in the seat. Fortunately I had plenty of others and after trying several I found one that fit but it sat with the top of the girdle just a bit below the surface of the metal. Ignorently, I thought it would not be a problem. But, with the first pass with the graver; I cut the burr completely off! Evidently, the girdle acts like a dam causing the metal to pile up as the graver is being pushed. Without this dam creating resistance, it was harder to control the graver. Fortunately, I was able to recut the burr without any difficulty.

Horseshoes and forget-me-nots

These earrings were somewhat of an artistic challenge for me. A request from my niece, who is an equestrian jumper, they needed to be post type and not too big. She also wanted horse shoes and garnets. I generally do not care for commissions because of the constraints and this was similar. I played with several concepts, most of which had roses in various places, before settling on this one with forget-me-nots. Putting the flower in the center provided a place to attach the post so the opening on the shoe is up (I'm told if they are upside down the "luck falls out" and no true equestrian would wear them...thanks to one of my students I did not make that mistake). Anyway, after depletion gilding, I put them in the tumbler with some burnishing shot. I will set the stones with bead settings.