Latest jewelry
April 2nd, 2009
Silver Ampersand necklace with inlayed stone that I made.
Process:
- Cut ampersand out of 1 mm silver sheet (save the pieces that compose the negative space)
- 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)
- Solder sheet to another 1 mm sheet.
- Cut, file and sand to exact rectangular shape
- File top with round file for tube to lay in.
- Solder tube in groove on top.
- Crush stones
- Apply glue and place stone fragments in one at a time like a puzzle.
- Wait 12 hours for glue to dry
- Sand stones to level of metal, go back and fill holes
- Sand and polish
- Mask stones with tape
- 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.