The First Ring For Sale, and My New Toy

First, I am excited because I bought a new toy today. Instead of the $15 micro soldering torch I have been using (which blew out repeatedly at crucial moments during brazing) I am now the proud owner of an oxygen/propylene torch! Yayyyyy! I feel like an actual metalworker now, like I finally got my wings, so to speak. I used it today to finish a ring that I wasn't able to complete with the microtorch since I could never get it hot enough to work on copper. It is still a little intimidating but I can't wait to use it again - soldering is SO easy now, it's crazy. I forgot to take a picture of the copper ring I made (I gave it to Dale already) but I'll take pictures tomorrow and post them on here soon.

Speaking of rings, the very first ring ever for sale in my store is now listed! It's a more elegant version of my Sleeping Beauty ring, as it features fancy scroll stamps on either side of the garnet and I also stamped a tiny secret heart on the inside of the band. The ring is a delicate size 4.5 and fits so wonderfully on my pinky finger. It is already so hard to part with my creations, but this ring is special to me because it is exactly the ring I have always dreamed of but never could find anything similar. I almost hope nobody buys it so that I can give it to Caoimhe. I will have to make another one just for her sometime.

Well, thanks for reading, I'm off to bed - enjoy your weekend!

*** You can find the new Sleeping Beauty ring for sale in my store here: http://www.etsy.com/view_listing.php?listing_id=44485665 ***

Sleeping Beauty

I'm sleepy tonight (it's after midnight already) and I have a sore throat, so I'm not feeling so good right now. But I wanted to share a picture of a ring I made today, because I am very proud of how it has turned out. It is the first silver band ring I have made, and the second I have attempted with a bezel set gemstone. It's also the first ring I've made that was nice enough to sign (it has a CL stamp on the inside, for Caoimhe Lily) and I also roughly stamped it with .925 to show the silver content.

I chose a natural garnet as the centerpiece, for its lovely dark red color. It can look almost black in certain lighting, and in front of a bright light the red is a perfect shade of scarlet. I decided to go with a lightly brushed, lightly antiqued sterling silver band, for a simple yet elegant look. The garnet is in a raised bezel setting which makes the gem appear larger than it is, and it is delicately wrapped in a cushion of gallery wire that reminds me of delicate upside-down hearts. It looks very princess-y to me, like something Snow White would wear on her ring finger. Such a dainty little thing, yet the color is bold and it almost looks like a single drop of blood is framed here in silver - maybe it was the single drop that fell from Sleeping Beauty's finger as it was pricked by the spinning wheel? Hmm, Sleeping Beauty, what a lovely name for a ring! I'm not sure I'll be able to part with this one anytime soon, but I wanted to share it with you because you will probably see a similar one in my shop sometime soon.

I'm off to bed now. More tomorrow...

My first ring attempts

This past week I have been trying to do several things at once. I have had a few orders to make, and I'm working on that Aquatic Challenge piece also. This morning, I stamped two sterling silver discs with Ashton and Caoimhe's names using my new typewriter font stamps, to photograph for a new listing on Etsy. (One of the perks of making jewelry, is that I can keep all the demos for myself and Caoimhe, yay!)

But the main thing I'm focusing on right now is learning to solder well with my torch, and making rings. I've been majorly inspired by a woman named Clarity who makes the most awesome rings for her Etsy store, and I won't be happy until I can make such beautiful things myself. So I have made a few attempts at ring making, although my ring mandrel hasn't arrived yet (it should be delivered this week).

They do have their flaws, but they aren't bad considering they are my first attempts and I'm just learning as I go, with no formal training. I've already learned a lot while making them (mostly from having to go back and fix the mistakes, lol). For example, I made this copper wire ring first (above). I actually used what I think may be a tire iron to help bend it into shape. I hammered the ends of the copper wire, and I like the way they look but I now know that I need to file and sand them smooth before shaping the ring because if I do that part last it is hard to file without the rest of the ring getting in the way. They didn't get completely smooth, so there are shadows in the pictures that look bad even though it is much less noticeable in person. I made the silver ball by melting a scrap piece of silver that I had lying around., and I really like the way it stands out, all shiny and round, so I will probably be making more with this feature. It took a few tries to shape the silver into a perfect ball, so that was a learning experience too.

I made this solid copper band for my husband Dale, to fit on his pointer finger and replace an old ring that he wore but didn't much care for. Not having a mandrel to size the ring, I had to use a measuring tape to measure his old ring, then I cut a strip of copper in the same size and filed it down. I found that one of the metal punches in my punch & die set was the same diameter of his ring, so I used it to shape the copper strip. After soldering it together, I realized that I didn't file the ends well enough, although I thought I had done so. I know now that the edges must be very straight and touch together completely before soldering, in order to join them perfectly. I think it still came out pretty well, there is an obvious seam but it is straight and the solder fills it throughout so it doesn't look messy. After the ring was finished, I used a file to lightly etch two rings near the edges of the band for a bit of added interest (you can barely see them in the picture). I think that it would be much easier to do this before soldering, while it is flat. I could probably make the lines a lot deeper that way.

The last ring (pictured below), a sterling silver and black star diopside ring, was the biggest pain EVER. First, I was planning to use a rose quartz on this ring, but I kept dropping and losing the stones on my kitchen floor. Very annoying. I started out with a slightly different design in mind, but it evolved as I was making it. I did end up wasting a bit of silver wire though, bleh. The hardest thing about this ring was trying to solder the pieces together. The wind was blowing my wire and solder around, and blew out my torch on several occasions (I can't wait to get a new torch, mine sucks). Because the ring has an irregular shape, it was hard to get the pieces in the right position to solder them. Dale had the solution though: he brought me some rocks from the driveway, and I used them to prop the metal wire into the positions I needed. So all was good, until I overheated the metal and a previously soldered piece melted. As it did, the wire slipped out of place, then the solder cooled and I now had a hideously disfigured ring. This is where Dale suggested I take a break, because I was getting very frustrated at this point. I had to remelt the solder to free the wires from each other again, and start all over. Ugh. Anyway, I finally got it right, and I think it ended up looking pretty cool. I did a pretty good job of soldering the joints this time around, they looked nice when I was done. I had to file a few places down (mostly where the solder had accidentally melted the first time around) and so I learned about filing away solder, which I had never done before. Once the ring was done, I felt that the black star diopside fit the ring much better than the pink quartz. I used liver of sulfur to antique the silver, which made it look pretty cool in my opinion. You can't tell in the pictures here, but black star diopside gets its name from the way the light reflects off of needle-like inclusions in the stone. It forms a very rare 4-pointed star that shines beautifully off the black surface of the stone.

In all, I am pretty proud of my first set of rings. I won't be selling them, as I see way too many flaws in my technique that I need to correct first. But I am happy enough with them to wear them myself (again, perks of the job! lol), and one day when I am an experienced metalsmith I will look back at them and remember the trials and errors that taught me along the way.

My Great Outdoor Crafting Day

Today was a GREAT crafting day. Dale took care of the kids all afternoon, and I wheeled my work bench outside to the porch, where I was able to make things all day long without interruption. It's not very often I get to do this (hell, I never do) so I really enjoyed it.

My charcoal block, flux, and various types of solder arrived yesterday, so I got to try my hand at soldering and brazing by myself for the first time today. (This was the main reason I went outside with it all, to keep the fumes out of the house.) Well, I had about an hour of preparation first. My copper solder is in the typical wire form, but the sterling silver solder is sold in sheets, so I had to cut the sheets into tiny little squares with a pair of heavy duty kitchen scissors. I bought two different types, hard and medium, which melt at different temperatures. So they have to be kept separate. I have a ton of empty baby food jars that I have kept stored away for just this type of thing, so I used two of them for storing the solder.

I also made what is called a "pickle" out of vinegar and salt, and put it in a different baby food jar. Pickle is used to remove the yucky black charred stuff from metal that has been heated. They sell various pickle solutions online, but I am all about using homemade things whenever possible. Not only does it save quite a bit of money in the long run, but it is safer than using harsh chemicals and more environmentally friendly as well.

So once the preparation was done, I was ready to make something. (I ended up with four projects, so this blog entry is going to be pretty long!) Yesterday, I had cut a piece of nickel silver into a star shape, and also cut out a copper rectangle that I stamped with stars and hammered around the edge. My first soldering project was to solder the star onto the rectangle. I dipped both of the pieces into a jar of flux (it prepares the metal and allows the solder to flow better) then placed the copper piece onto the charcoal block. I set a square of hard solder in the center, and put the star on top. Safety goggles, on! Torch lit, check! It took a while for me to adjust the flame correctly but I managed to successfully solder the two pieces together. However, they looked like a charred mess as I dropped them into the pickle, and ten minutes later it still looked like a half-charred mess. I decided to keep going, though.

I didn't know what I wanted to make next, so I looked in my scrap drawer and pulled out two copper circles. I cut them into arches, bent them around, and tried to envision what they could become. Didn't have much luck, lol. Then I decided I would make a little bird. I placed the two arches together for the body and tail, then cut 1/4th off of a scrap sterling silver disc and soldered it on as a wing, and also used scraps to make a little beak. My bird needed an eye though. I remembered a video I watched recently that showed someone melting silver into a ball, so I tried it and after a few tries I learned how to make a perfectly round ball with a flat bottom. I made a few of these out of scraps, soldered one onto the bird as an eye, and put the others aside for later. All the while, fluxing, soldering, pickling. Each piece looked so bad, I was convinced I was doing something horribly wrong. The silver balls were black with char and ash, and the copper turned different shades from purple to yellow to black. Yuck. Not to mention, my bird design was pretty crappy. I will admit it. And since I'm still learning to solder, I accidentally let it run all over the beak and cover the copper (oops!). But it's cute in it's own little way, damn it! I guess I just have a soft spot in my heart from all my little creations, ugly or otherwise.

Next I decided to make a ring out of copper. Last week I had made my first ring ever, out of a copper washer, but I wanted to try making one out of a piece of wire today. Dale had some old air conditioning wire that I stripped to get a large piece of copper wiring (yay for recycling!). I don't have a ring mandrel yet (I realllly want one of these but they're like $30 and out of my budget for the moment) so I used a weird iron pole that was in Dale's tool box. No clue what it is for (a tire iron, maybe?), but it is round and just a little larger around than my pointer finger so it worked. First I hammered the tip of the wire flat to add interest and get rid of the sharp edge, then began shaping it around the tire iron. I kind of did a free-form shape, trying to find a style that I liked. I made it wrap around then curl back on itself. Once I figured out the basic shape I wanted, I had to uncurl the wire and cut it to the right size, then hammer that end also. The unbending and rebending was hard, because wire tends to bend at a sharp angle and I had to keep reworking it to keep it round on all sides. Next, I selected one of the ugly black silver balls and soldered it onto one of the hammered ends of the ring. It turned out to be a cool design, but like the other things I made today, it looked like a pile of black junk. I was getting a little discouraged by this point.

My last project was to take the solid copper ring I previously had made, and solder a silver ball onto it as a focal point. At about this time, it began to rain and the wind started blowing my stuff around like crazy. I couldn't keep my torch lit and the air was so cold that the metal kept cooling while I tried to solder the ball onto the ring. I managed to get the solder to hold the ball onto the ring on one single side, and at this point I decided it was useless, and time to clean up and go inside.

Because I didn't want to give up on my yucky looking creations, I went ahead and threw them in the tumbler to polish them and try to get some of the yucky charred stuff off. I'm glad I did, because an hour or so later I took them out and WOW! They were perfectly clean and shiny as new. I knew my tumbler was awesome but didn't know it would take off everything the pickle left behind. What a relief, to know I have this wonderful machine that works miracles. The copper wire ring that I made turned out to be very pretty, I love this piece. When I showed Dale, he said, "Wow, you made this? You could probably sell this one for a lot of money" which was so nice to hear, because it was the first time he's been impressed by anything I've made. (He doesn't see the beauty in my ugly little darlings.) He teased me and said, "It's almost like you can make real jewelry!" lol. But I don't think I want to sell this one. It is the first pretty ring I have ever made, and it fits my finger perfectly. I think I will be keeping it. The pictures I took do not show it justice; although it is hammered in places it does not look dark or shadowy like in the pictures. It's very shiny and the silver ball really pops out at you.

So here are some pictures of the finished results, except for the solid ring which needs to be re-soldered on one side because the weather was too finicky today.


My ugly little birdy which serves no actual purpose:


I decided this one would make an awesome key chain:


My pretty copper & sterling silver ring: