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A newbies journey into the jewellery world- Creating presents!
Creating Presents!
Having well and truly caught the jewellery bug since starting my course five weeks ago I had decided to treat myself to a few tools so I could get started with my ideas at home. I decided I wanted to make a pendant for a friend’s birthday present so I thought I’d start making this at home and test my skills… and to my surprise it went pretty smoothly!
Using a small piece of spare copper sheet from a previous class I drew a small heart shape on to it, then resting the copper on my bench peg I cut around the outline of the heart. This time I only managed to snap one saw blade, definitely an improvement! As my sawing skills still aren’t quite up to scratch this gave me a rough heart. Using a needle file I smoothed around the edges making the copper slightly more heart shaped and it was ready.
Putting my sawing skills to the test once again I cut out a small square from a piece of sterling silver sheet. Again using a needle file I smoothed the edges and rounded the corners of the square. I had remembered that it was easier to do this and keep the shape even by resting it on the bench peg and using long motions with the file.
The two pieces were then ready to be soldered together. I decided to use an easier method than solder strip and went for an easy solder paste as easy will be more than sufficient for this piece. Using the paste also meant that there was no need for flux, making it much quicker! I spread the paste over the back of the copper heart and then positioned it in the centre of the square, leaving space to drill a hole for the pendant later on.
Having never soldered two pieces on top of each other before I was a bit worried about whether I would know that the solder had flowed as I wouldn’t be able to see it. The first time I tried I didn’t leave the solder to get to the right temperature so when I popped the piece in the pickle the heart fell off…a little annoying! However on my second attempt I made sure that I watched for the solder to flow around the edge of the heart and this time it worked! I popped the piece in the pickle. As I have yet to buy myself a dremel multi tool I took my piece to college to drill. Using the drill with a 1mm drill bit I drilled a hole in the centre at the top ready to pop a jump ring through. I have started to polish the piece up using polishing papers, a great alternative if you don’t have a dremel, I have found that wrapping each grade around a nail file allows me to reach all the difficult areas and keeps the polishing even. I can’t wait to see the pendant fully polished!
After a week off for half term I was really excited to get back to class and put some more ideas into practice! Scary as it is, we’re getting closer to Christmas so this week I have attempted at being organised (never my strong point when it comes to Christmas!) and have started some projects for presents!
Using the left over silver sheet from my pendant I cut out two discs using a disc cutter, ready to make a pair of earrings. I then annealed these discs bringing them up to a rosy pink colour using the gas torch, this softens them slightly so that I could then do the next step. Taking the discs and putting them in a large hole in the doming block I hammered these with the relevant doming punch, one at a time so as to make sure the level of doming was matching. I continued to make the curve in the domes larger by hammering them in smaller domes, gradually stepping down in size. Once I had achieved the correct dome these were ready to go. Next week I am going to attempt granulation, to make small silver balls which I will then solder in to these domes. I’m really looking forward to seeing my designs taking shape!
To see our newbies previous posts on making chains and doming, please click here!
29th October 2010.