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A newbies journey into the jewellery world- Week three already!
It's already week three of kernowcraft team member Katie's first steps into the jewellery world and she's beginning to make progress!
Week three- God this is going quickly! I managed to finish my bangle without too many hiccups, although it did begin to test my patience! The soldering process was a little more long winded for the bangle than I had first imagined, it felt like the solder was never going to melt as the bangle was such a large piece, however a handy hint from my tutor helped me finally get there! I was told to stack supablox around the bangle to stop the heat from escaping and it wasn’t too long before the trick worked!
Once I’d managed to make a loop for the bangle it was time to shape and texture it. I used a Rawhide mallet to hammer the bangle around a large circular mandrel, then once it looked round (well to me anyway!) I started to texture the bangle using the end of a jewellers hammer to make a lovely striped texture.
My plan once I manage to perfect my skills is to make another bangle and link the two together with a charm, although at the moment this does seem a little ambitious!
Next it was on to jump rings, we sell a lot here but I’d never really considered making them myself. We used varying thicknesses of sterling silver wire to experiment with, I decided to use a 1.5mm as I wanted to make large jump rings that I can then hammer to make links with. I wrapped this wire around a the base of a doming punch a few times to make a coil, then it was simply a case of sawing through the top of the coil and the jump rings began to ping everywhere! I was then able to twist them so the join meets and it was time for my soldering skills to be put to the test once again!
I managed to make a few jump rings of which I hammered on the metal part of my anvil and they are now ready to be made into a link bracelet which hopefully will begin to take shape next week!
To see our newbies previous post on making bangles, click here!
14th October 2010.
