Copper and silver necklace

There'll be no review of 2018 or goals for 2019 from me.  I did so little craft last year, I can barely believe it.  I would like to craft more this year, but I'm not putting any pressure on myself, so I'll make what I make and post when I post!

I finished this necklace before Christmas.  I've shown you peeks of me making it.  In this post from March last year, I showed you a bit of the technique!  Making soldered chain IS a time-consuming process, but I'm also quite slow and made various other things at the same time!

It's made from copper and sterling silver.  I made large jump rings, soldered them and cleaned them up, then rolled them through the rolling mill to flatten them.  They were then hammered to add texture.  I then made what felt like about a gazillion small jump rings and soldered it all together.  I then spent a LONG time filing and sanding each and every link!

It is finished with a hand made and hammered toggle clasp.  I love it.  I love mixed metal jewellery and I love rings like this.  I'm not sure I'd embark on making another chain from scratch though!

Silver and gold necklace

I managed to start and finish a piece of silver jewellery in just a couple of weeks rather than a few months or a year or more!  OK, so I started it back in July before the summer break, but technically it was only a few weeks!  

I thought I had some process photos of this necklace, but I can't find them so maybe I don't.  I used argentium, which I used before making my brother's ring, and again I used pieces of my mum's wedding ring.

I pierced out the five pieces of argentium in varying sizes and cleaned them up.  I punched the circles from mum's wedding ring using the hydrolic press and my circle punch kit.  The original idea was to completely inlay them into the silver batons, as I did with my brother's ring.  After fusing the gold to the argentium, I loved the way they protruded, so decided not to roll them in.

I bought some thin tube and the omega chain, then cut the tube to fit the backs of the batons.  I soldered them in place before cleaning everything up.  I then cut more pieces of tube to act as spacers.

You can see them on the photo above.  Then it was just a case of threading everything on to the chain and resoldering the clasp.  Job done!  This is a necklace I will treasure.

A present for a friend

I am now at that age where my friends are turning 40.  Yes, I'm 40, good guess!  It was my oldest friend's 40th last weekend, 2 weeks before the event I suddenly realised I needed to buy her a present.  She's not an easy person to buy for... I decided something handmade would be more suitable.

I'd been thinking about an idea of making a pendent using 3 different size circles.  I cut them out of 1mm thick sterling silver sheet using a circle punch.  The mid-sized circle was left blank.  The larger and smaller circles were texturised before punching them out.

The smallest circle is patterned using a centre punch and hammer to make tiny indentations.  The largest circle was rolled through the rolling mill with a skeleton leaf.  I adore this pattern and have it in mind for some future makes.  As the pieces had burrs after punching, I had to file and sand to clean them up.  The smallest circle got a stick soldered to the reverse and the larger two had holes punched through.

This "stick" (a piece of 0.8mm round wire) was inserted through the other 2 circles, then I just used the round nosed pliers to make a bail before filing and sanding the edge.

It was really hard to take photos as I had put it in the barrel polisher, meaning it's very shiny!  I've just put it on a bought trace chain, also in sterling silver.  

This was a pretty quick make.  When I told my tutor my plans, she said I could get it done in half a session.  It actually took me a session and a half, but I work really slowly and do rather a lot of talking and eating!

Oh, and yes, the friend liked it!

poor defeated spinner ring

One of my earliest projects in silversmithing class was this fiddle ring.  I loved that ring and wore it every day.  I made it to fit on my middle finger.  Then I lost some weight.  You couldn't tell I'd lost weight, none of it came off my fat bits, it all came off my fingers!  The ring was too big... and no, I can't wear it on my thumb, my thumb is smaller than my middle finger.  I gave it to my BFF and set out to make another.

Complete and utter failure!  I only had a small piece of silver that wasn't long enough, so I rolled it through the rolling mill with a texture, and soldered on some copper.  I quite liked the two tone effect.  I made the small outer ring from square wire.  

Once the main ring is soldered, The outside is domed to keep the smaller ring in place.  The join between the silver and copper split.  I straightened, re-soldered, domed, it split.  Again and again.  Finally, I managed it!  I put the smaller ring on, domed the other end, and...

It doesn't spin!!  The outer ring is too small.

Failure.

Silversmithing update

It's been a while since I did a silversmithing update.  After the summer break, then a further enforced break whilst I had a broken shoulder, I went back to class in January.  

I've been working on the necklace that I started last year.  The copper was so tarnished it had to go in the pickle before I started.  I don't know what came over me when I decided to completely hand make a chain, madness!  The picture above is me trying to keep track of which rings were soldered, which ones were next and which grade of solder I'd used.  Solder comes in Hard, Medium, Easy and Extra Easy.  Hard has the highest melting point, so you start with this one.  If you solder something and it comes into contact with the flame again, you want it to be a higher grade so it doesn't remelt.  This would have been a lot easier to tackle if I didn't have a pattern to the chain involving copper and silver rings and larger silver rings!

I feel like I'm going to be soldering this forever.

For a bit of a break, I started another project.  Back in 2016 I made a fiddle ring.  I loved that ring and wore it every day.  Then I lost some weight.  None came off my ample behind or tummy, it came off my fingers!  Yeah, great, thanks body!  The ring no longer fits.  It was time for a new one.

I didn't have a long enough piece of silver, so I added in a copper section!  Since this photo, I filed it down and cleaned it up, but when I came to dome it (to accept the spinner ring), the solder cracked.  I'll be re-soldering this tomorrow night.  And hopefully finishing soldering the necklace... which means I have several months of filing and sanding ahead of me!

Soldering rings

I am rapidly running out of things to show you - hence the lack of posting.  I have this project on the go, and I finished a quilt yesterday which I'll show soon.  Beyond that, I have 2 half finished bags and that's pretty much it!  I honestly don't know where time goes these days.  I have less house work to do as I don't make such a mess as the ex did, so why don't I have time to craft?

Anyway, here's what I've been up to in silversmithing class.

Soldering rings!  That's an elicit shot - if my tutor had seen me take that I would have got a health and safety telling off!  I soldered tons of them.  Copper ones and silver ones.  The plan was to make a simple link bracelet.

I seem to have caught the solder just beginning to melt on this photo!

Here above is the pile of unsoldered rings and the two I'd done.  You can seen how the metal changes colour with the heat.

When they were all soldered I ran them through the rolling mill to make them nice and squashed.  I think this is 2mm round wire I was using.  I love the look of this little pile.

Next, I filed and sanded them, and then took the hammer to them to add some texture.

After making some smaller rings in silver, I dumped them on the table and my tutor remarked that they'd make a nice statement necklace rather than a bracelet.  I spent quite some time messing around the with arrangement, couldn't come up with anything so used some of them to make a bracelet instead!  It's almost finished so I'll show you soon.  I do intend to make the necklace too, I just need to come up with a design.

Silver triangle

I know my silversmithing posts aren't very popular, but I do want to keep this blog as a journal for me too, so I'm going to post about it anyway!  Also, I love this piece, I'm so proud of it.

I posted about my copper triangle at the end of last year.  I then went on to make one out of silver and I'm in love with it!

This is a hollow form.  It's made with 0.8mm sheet silver, cut and soldered together and then filed to remove the joins.  The top piece has been textured by rolling it through a mill with a piece of fabric.

After finishing, I drilled a hole across one of the points to string it.

The back was polished to perfection, but I've worn it a lot and it's become marked already!

I strung it on a pre-bought sterling-silver chain.  I think it works perfectly with the design.  Now I just need to string the copper version...

domed pendants

This was something I was making in Silversmithing class last year.  I was going to post about it when I finished it, but I never actually finished it and don't know when/if I'll come back to is, so I'm posting it now for posterity.

These were to be domed pendents.  They are hollow forms.  They were made by annealing sheets of 1mm copper and cutting discs out with a disc cutter.  I then put them into a doming forming and hammered them to create the curve.  A tiny slot is filed out on one of them for each pair, on either side.  This is to make it easier to drill them later.

One is placed on top of another, with solder in between.  This is the difficulty.  Balancing 5 pieces of tiny solder, then lowering the lid on without any of the solder moving... It frustrated me so much I almost cried!  I have some silver circles cut out ready to make domed pendents, but they will have to wait until my skills improve!

Copper triangle

It's been ages since I showed you anything from my silversmithing classes.  I was working on some hollow domes, but I couldn't get them to solder together and gave up.  I will go back to them at a later date, when my head is a bit better.  

I moved on to a different hollow form, I chose a triangle.

This is the copper prototype.  Silver is expensive and it can be worthwhile having a go in copper first, especially as I love copper and wear copper jewellery too.  It started with a long thin piece of copper (5mm thin, about 8cm long) that I had to score very heavily.  I pulled it round and soldered the join.  This was then soldered to piece of sheet copper  which I had run through the rolling mill with a piece of lace to imprint a pattern on it. 

The second side was soldered on - you can see the solder really well in this picture.

The sheet was pierced with a saw close to the edge, then the filing began.  And continued.  And continued.  And then out came the sandpaper... I still have some way to go!

I have now started on the silver version, thinking I'd do some sanding over Christmas, I took some photos to show you the beginning of the process, but they were on my old phone...  I will show you again when both pieces are completed.

Little soldered boxes

I had my first taste of mixed media at a workshop me and wonderful mum went to at Hope and Elvis.  The workshop was led by Di Tinker Foster and we made little soldered boxes.

There were a selection of paper boxes to chose from and we selected one in each of three sizes - 1" square, 1.5" square and 3"x2".  There were a whole host of "bits" to chose from too, and we'd brought along some things of our own.

There were loads of old postage stamps, and I managed to dig out some old Communist ones, including one from the USSR!  I was thrilled with that as the Communist world is of endless fascination to me.  I'd taken along some fabrics, and some charms, and available were glitters, the postage stamps, old dictionaries to cut up, sari silk, tons of beads and buttons, sewing thread, bits of lace and other trims, and broken jewellery.  

On my tray above you can see my largest box at the back with the stamps in it, some charms, buttons, a pot of beads, a mirror tile, a bunny bead (it's actually hand made, not by me, and I've treasured it for a couple of years waiting for the perfect project), the 1" box and my glass lids.  The glass lids are heavy bevelled glass.

This is my big box.  I stuck down the stamps using foam pads on some to make them different heights.  I picked out some large pearls and cut out words from the dictionary and glued them on.  The words include communism, Poland, Yugoslavia, USSR, comitern and socialist.  There is also a little bead with KGB on it - unfortunately it has wedged itself behind the USSR stamp which I think is hilarious - the KGB is behind the Iron Curtain!

I added a trim round the edge.  The process was to solder the glass lid on using copper tape and solder.  This is a technique I've done before when I've done copper foiling on glass projects so I was familiar with what we were doing.  I cut the copper tape using deckle-edged scissors, then applied it to the box and lid.  Solder is then used to cover the copper tape, holding everything securely in place.  I added little handles with some wire.

The paper box was made from olde worlde map paper which is quite fitting!

This is my 1.5" square box.  I gathered some sari silk and used it as a background.  I then added some sequins and a button and three words.  Love.  Bunny.  Rabbit.  Appropriate for this beautiful bead, and for bunnies in general!  The bead is from Tree Wings Studio on Etsy.
Her beads are amazing and there are a few more I'd like!  This was pricy, but it was a present from the lovely Mr CA.  Of course, being handcrafted, it is well worth the price, but it is a lot of money to pay for a bead.

The paper box was made from a dictionary page.

This was so hard to photograph!  This is the tiny 1" square box.  The paper box is a page from a French book.  I put some pretty paper in the back (mum had brought some with her), then suspended a sewing machine charm from the top.  I added some small purple iris beads which I left loose to rattle around.  

We had an absolutely brilliant day, it was the day before mother's day so also took mum to the on-site cafe for lunch.  Playing around with bits and bobs was so much fun.  I'd love to do some more mixed media, but I want to take more classes first, I don't feel prepared to just run with it.  Have any of you lovely readers tried mixed media?

Silversmithing - rings

Last year me and Mr CA did a 2 day silver jewellery making workshop.  The teacher was so good that I put myself on her waiting list for her evening class.  Back in January, a space came up so I'm not attending a silversmithing class every Wednesday evening.  My teacher is Lisa Pearson, I can't find her on social media, so you'll have to believe me when I say she's a brilliant teacher.  Not only does she clearly know her onions, she's a really good teacher, great with an explanation and very patient.

Most of the class have been doing it for a while, so they kind of get on with their own thing and Lisa helps and advises when she's needed.  She also does a demonstration on different silversmithing techniques each class.  There is one other newbie besides me and we are going through a schedule designed to teach us the basics.

Over the first three weeks we made 3 silver rings.  The first (on the left) is made from simple 2mm round silver wire, shaped, soldered, filed and hammered to give a nice texture.  Mine turned out too big so I didn't bother polishing it up, though I may incorporate it into a necklace in the future in which case I will finish it.

The middle ring is made from 2mm x 3mm D-wire.  The inside is flat to your finger, the outside is curved.  This is just shaped, soldered and polished and I'm really happy with mine.

Finally we made a ring from 1mm sheet silver.  We used a pre-cut blank and textured it with a cross-pein hammer to give the bark texture.  We then soldered, filed and polished before burnishing to bring up the shine.  I'm also very happy with this ring but don't find it very comfortable to wear as it's 7mm high and I've only got titch fingers.

Week 4 was a pendent so watch out for that coming up...

Silversmithing

Mr CA and I went on a fab silversmithing workshop ran by the local college at a local venue The Textile Workshop.  Yes, you read that right, Mr CA came with me!  It's his first time to one of my craft classes but it's something he's fancied giving a go for a while and we have talked about it in the past.  I found this class on the Textile Workshop's website and as it was £38 per person for a 2-day course (excluding materials) there was no way I was passing it up!

It was a great class, the tutor - Lisa Pearson - was brilliant and we both enjoyed it.  Mr CA will be my beautiful assistant, demonstrating the various stages we went through to make these rings.  (I made these rings, Mr CA made a masculine one for himself).

We started with 2mm silver wire which we bent around a ring mandrel and hammered with a rawhide mallet to get it to the correct size and a perfect circle.

As there was an overlap, we used a piercing saw (like a hacksaw) on a bench peg to saw the join between the overlaps to make our ring bases.

This is what you come out with after that stage:

Then comes the fun bit - soldering!  The join is painted with flux which is a liquid that helps the solder to run.  A tiny pallion of hard solder was added to the join and then you use a blowtorch to melt the solder into the join.

It is quenched in cold water, then placed into pickle - an acid-based liquid heated to 60 degrees centigrade - to burn off the fire scale.  It's then rinsed in cold water.  Then it was time to file to get the joins lovely and perfect.

It was about this time that I became so engrossed in what I was doing that I forgot to take many more photos!  At this stage you could hammer the ring with a ball pein (round) or cross pein (wide and short) hammer to create a texture.  I did that on 2 of my rings.  I forgot to say at the start, we were making a set of 5 stacking rings, though I quickly discovered my fingers are too stumpy for 5 rings, so I made a set of 2 stacking rings to be worn with 1 spacer, and a single ring to be worn with 2 spacers.

I cut out these shapes from 0.8mm silver metal sheet using the piercing saw we used to cut the rings.  It was quite tricky and fiddly but I didn't cut myself.  I hammered some dots on one of the flowers (that's what they're supposed to be!) and for a tail of the bunny using a centre punch which is a spike you hit with a hammer.  There's a lot of hammering in silversmithing!

I shaped the flower using this.  This is a doming block and the doming punches to use with it.  I put the flowers into the concave slots, then hammered the punch on top to create the curves.  I made a couple of silver balls by just heating a small piece of silver, then soldered these into the rings.  The ring tops were then soldered onto the bases using easy solder, pickled and rinsed.

The penultimate step is to clean up the rings using needle files and them emery paper of various grades until the rings are as perfect as you can get them.  As you can see in the above photo, the soldering process leaves them white.  We put them into a barrel polisher and they came out all sparkly!

Here are the spacer rings with the bunny, can you see the light glinting off the spacer rings?

I had a bit of time left, so I used a piece of copper to cut some circles using a circle punch, then domed them in the doming block.  I drilled top and bottom, except for one which was just drilled at the bottom.  I plan to do some enamelling on them and turn them into a pendent.

I also used some more 2mm wire to make necklace connectors.  I spiralled them using pliers which was really difficult as the wire was so thick.  I then ran them through the rolling mill which flattens them.  I have plans for these, hopefully I'll show you before too long.  I also pierced out the heart, though I didn't have much time for finishing it properly.  I think I'll texture it, then I can use it in a piece.

Well that was a long post!  It was a brilliant class and I WILL be doing more silversmithing!  I'm on the waiting list for an evening class, but I also intend to do some at home... watch this space (but not too soon, you know how it takes me an age to get to anything!).  This class was also responsible for pulling me out of a depressive episode which just shows the power of craft!