Andrew S. Harmon

My pieces in the SUF art show and some shots from around Florence.

This last weekend I went to Cinque terra.  It was absolutely amazing!  We hiked between the 5 cities and enjoyed some sun on the beaches.  We stayed in Porto Venere which was nice because it was much quieter than the Cinque terra (mostly only italian tourists) but still very very beautiful and only a 30 min (beautiful) ferry ride away from the 5 cities.

We had an art show at fuji studios.  I really liked some of the silkscreened fabric patterns that people had made.

Silver Ampersand necklace with inlayed stone that I made.

Process:

1. Cut ampersand out of 1 mm silver sheet (save the pieces that compose the negative space)
2.  Solder rectangle and tiny negative space pieces to another 1 mm silver sheet.  (The surface tension of the solder wants to pull all of the pieces together which makes things difficult)
3.  Solder sheet to another 1 mm sheet.  
4.  Cut, file and sand to exact rectangular shape
5.  File top with round file for tube to lay in.
6.  Solder tube in groove on top.
7.  Crush stones
8.  Apply  glue and place stone fragments in one at a time like a puzzle.
9.  Wait 12 hours for glue to dry
10.  Sand stones to level of metal, go back and fill holes
11.  Sand and polish
12.  Mask stones with tape
13.  Sandblast then remove tape.

Oh, and there a lot of intermediate steps (like pickling for 10 min after every soldering). But I managed to do it all this week (about 12 hours). 

During the waiting parts I made a married metal button as a practice piece before I move on to silver.