Repurposed Copper

I've been a bit swept away by upcycling lately.

My bench is absolutely littered with copper scraps at the moment, because of all the other projects I've been working on. It's been nice to have a little time just to bang out something beautiful.

I oxidised the chain for these, just to match the upcycled, vintage look.

As always, these necklaces are available on Etsy. Check it out!

Stacking Rings: Basic Ring

So, this is a quick overview of the tools I use to create my jewellery. I'll show them in more detail throughout the process.

The easiest rings are created using wire. There's a huge variety of sterling silver wires available, you just have to pick the one you like the best.

To figure out how long of a piece of wire you need to make your ring, you have to do some math!

My wire is 1.4mm thick, and the ring size I want to make has a diameter of 17.2mm. I put this into an easy formula:

(wire thickness + diameter of ring size) x 3.14
(1.4mm+17.2mm) x 3.14
58.4mm

Boom!

Now, I use a hand file and my mitered square to make sure both sides of this wire are a perfect 90 degrees. Soldering silver requires that you have a good contact surface.

Once that's done, I bend my ring into shape. Soldering shape, that is. It looks like a D!

I know it doesn't look like a ring at this point. This shape ensures that the solder joint has maximum contact for soldering. I'll bang it into shape once the solder joint is done.

Soldering takes practice, so I'm not going to go into too much detail here. You select your solder (easy, medium, or hard), paint flux on the joint, torch it until the solder flows, and then throw it in pickle to remove the nasty crud. You can see pictures of the materials I use in these steps here:

Once the soldering is done, you can bash it into shape.

Once you've got your ring into a beautiful round shape, you need to give it a beautiful finish. I love using radial disks on my flexshaft:

Each of these coloured radial disks is a different grit. You go from the roughest grit to the smoothest. These radial disks give me a great finish, and I love using them. They are a bit expensive, but I find them worth every penny.

This is what your stacking ring will now look like:

Perfect huh? You can wear this ring as is, or you can add a stone or other decoration to it. I'll show you how to do that next time!

Carnelian

Just another quick project to get off my bench:

This idea has been percolating for quite some time, and I actually wanted to do a cuttlefish casting for the top. Lacking space and cuttlefish, I settled for a hammered half circle.

Spent a rainy afternoon polishing my hammers (the finish on your hammers will transfer to your metal!) and banged these out in about an hour.

Off-Kilter

I've been a tad behind on my jewellery work lately. I'm up with my parents at Many-Hues, so that's putting a bit of a dent in my jewellery time.

This is my latest Etsy listing. It's a quick, lightweight necklace that I love wearing at the office. I tried it out as a reminder to myself that I don't have to make everything symmetrical! Jewellery is allowed to be off-kilter, and I'll have more fun making it.

The next piece I'd like to make is a modification again, I'll be adding a setting to a pre-existing component. Can't wait to get home to work on it!

Till then though, check out what we're doing on the land here!

This necklace can be purchased on Etsy

Fidgety Projects

I am finally nearly finished a project that I've been thinking about for quite some time.

This is a basic spinner ring that's been growing in my mind for quite some time. I simply made a 10mm wide band ring (I just kept hammering the texture until it fit my finger properly). Once I had it fitting nicely, I measured the diameter and made a copper band that fits nicely over it. I had to stretch it a little just to make sure it would spin freely over the silver.

Now that the two parts fit together well, I have to use a dapping punch to slightly flare the edges of the silver so the copper won't slip off.

I don't have a dapping punch.

So tomorrow, I'm going to the hardware store to see if I can locate a large ball peen hammer. It's not perfect, but sometimes you really have to make due with the tools you have.

Maybe now I'll have a ring to fidget with instead of biting my nails. Here's hoping!

Digging through the bench

I don't know why I feel like I haven't accomplished much this weekend. I finished this little piece:

This is a sterling silver ring with a small copper accent. It's my first attempt into more 'delicate' jewellery. I can't really afford the silver for ring blanks, so I've had to get a little creative with the materials that I had. This ring is made from 14GA wire that I put through my rolling mill. I flattened it to a thickness of 1mm, and a width of about 1.5mm. The copper came from some wire I bought at the hardware store (They're starting to get used to some random red head coming in and buying random electrical and plumbing supplies). The leaf was purchased at work, Stones and Findings.

I also managed to finish off a project my Dad and I started last week:

It started out like this

Turned into these

Will be sold looking like these

 So I'm quite happy that was finished. I also made a copper bracelet, but that's really just a quick bangle, nothing special to post here.

Thoughts from the weekend:

• Don't be afraid to melt things. Yes, it didn't work. Yes, it might sit around in your drawer for a few years. Yes, you'll find something to use it for.
• Don't be afraid to use what you have. You don't HAVE to go shell money out on silver plate, you can improvise with the more affordable materials that you have.
• Using tweezers to hold things together for soldering ISN'T cheating. If it works, who cares how you got there.
• If you've been wishing for a particular tool/play thing/animal for years, just go out and buy the damn thing.
• Even though I see other people's jewellery online and think 'wow, thier stuff is so much nicer then mine', I have to remember that I still have a skill that 90% of the rest of the world doesn't.

Perspective. It makes life a lot easier.

Creating an engagement ring

It's such a busy time of year!

I'm currently very busy working on Christmas gifts for my family, as you'll be able to see once the season is finally over on my knitting blog.

I also need to finish this lovely little number:

 

The prongs on this need to be lovelied up (which is much easier once they're attached to something I can actually hold on to!), and then the stones need to be set. The recipient has chosen an emerald, oval center stone, with two pear shaped clear stones on the sides. She's a chemist, so she didn't mind using synthetic stones to help cut back on some of the costs.

The ring needs to be fully polished before setting the stones. In preperation for this, I've taken the shank of the ring to a fine emery to help cut back on work. There's no point taking it to a full polish at this point, because finish will be ruined once I solder the settings to the shank. The settings themselves haven't had too much attention, mostly because they're too small to hold onto.

Once the settings are soldered on, I'll be taking the entire ring to a fine emery, and tossing it in my tumber to toughen up the prongs. Sterling silver is like butter right after soldering, so this will help ensure that the prongs won't BUDGE once the stones are set. After the tumbler, I'll take some black rouge to it to make sure it's a ring she's going to be proud of.

Once I'm in the process of setting the stones, I'll post an updated picture. I've never set pear shaped stones before, so I'll admit I'm nervous. I know the theory, I've just never done it in practice. Worst case scenario, if I make a huge mistake I can always take the prongs off and fashion new ones. It's easy once you've had to practice it a few times!

Bezel Setting

It's interesting how sometimes the easiest jewellery principles are the hardest to pull off. I'm sad to say that I've been working on this particular project for a lot longer then I'm proud of.

I haven't done a bezel set stone since I was in school, which is a little over two years ago. I remember it being quite easy, and I was quite excited to get this project going.

Apparently bezel set stones are a little more difficult then I remember.

I'm lucky enough to have a hammer handpiece for my flexshaft that my partner bought for me last valentines day. Generally this tool was a complete godsend for doing bezel set stones, and I didn't have one in school. I thought this would be such a simple project!

I really struggled with this bezel. I'm not sure what I've messed up, personally. I used a step bezel wire, which had a wall of approximately 0.4mm. I made sure to anneal the bezel cup. I actually had a proper tool with which to set. I still ended up spending about half an hour setting this stone, when it should have only taken me 10.

All that aside, at least the project is completed. The stone is a beautiful natural citrine, and the entire piece is sterling silver. It's beautiful and shiny, and I'm incredibly happy about it. I'll be putting it up on my Etsy before too long.