Making silver jewellery (part 2)
Crafts, Jewellery |
This weekend I went to the second part of my silver jewellery workshop with Barbara Ryman. It was all about ring making.
I got started by drawing up some simple bands with a variety of shapes pierced out. After I decided which band I want to make I transferred the design onto a sheet of silver with a permanent marker.
First I had to cut out all the inside parts, like I learned in last weeks workshop. I then refined and straightened the sawing edges with a variety files.
After that I cut out the whole band and straightened the edges with a variety of files. Before I could bend the band into a loop I had to soften the metal by annealing it.
I let it cool down before I bent the softened silver into a U shape on a ring mandrel. I then only had to bend both ends with pliers into a nice flat loop.
With files and pliers I refined the endings till they exactly matched and were perfectly horizontally aligned. I positioned the ring on a soldering block and applied flux and tiny pieces of solder to the joint.
With a gas flame I heated the silver piece equally until the solder melted and filled the gap between the two ends. With tweezers I placed the hot ring into the pickling solution.
With a rawhide mallet I shaped the loop on a ring mandrel to a nice round ring. With very coarse sandpaper (240) I straightened out the edges and sanded off the fire scale on the surface. I then refined all surfaces of the ring (outside and inside) with a range of sandpaper (400, 600, 1200) before I gave the ring its final polish with Brasso.
For my second rind I wanted to use some of my etched silver I made in an earlier workshop with Barbara Ryman. As a base I cut a ring shape out of the plain silver plate.
This shape I annealed, soldered, shaped and polished like I did the first ring. Out of the etched silver I cut a round disk to go on top of the ring.
This disk I shape to fit exactly on top of the ring. I then soldered the decorative disk on top of the ring. Because of fire scale I had to sand and polish the band again. I tried to do as few work as possible on top of the ring as I didn’t wanted to accidentally sand off the pattern. To give the pattern a bit more depth and to disguise the fire scale on top of the band I tarnished this area in black before I polished it again. Elevated areas turn out shiny again but the dark colour stayed in the depressions.
I very much enjoyed creating and producing my own jewellery. Both workshops were great fun and I hope I get to do some more in the future.