06.25.18 A Bug's Life - Kinetic Jewelry, Part 2

I had already decided that the class, and everything I made over the weekend, was going to count as my birthday presents.  Finishing the two planned projects on the first day didn't change that, it just meant that I was going to have bonus pieces of jewelry!  The challenge was - what do I want to do next?

I like all the stones that I buy - and I have accumulated a pretty substantial collection (as in, if I weren't to buy anymore I could work for quite a while before I ran out) - of those, there are few (well, ok more than a few) that I have absolutely no intention of selling once they become jewelry.  

I chose two relatively small stones - a sterling opal and an ammonite - and decided that I wanted to work on riveted bails.  But, before I did anything else, I had to cut out the backs of the pendants.  

Photo credit: Pixar

The ammonite was easy. When the fossil shell is cabbed by a lapidary artist, the patterns look like oak leaves, so I chose an acorn - because at our house we like to say "the acorn doesn't fall far from the tree".  

The opal was a little more difficult, until I remembered Heimlich, the bright green caterpillar from A Bug's Life - and decided that not only would a do a rivet, but I would give the pendant wings!

The hinged bail I had done on the first day turned out beautifully - but to do it requires that the top of the setting be flat (or that the metalsmith is more skilled than me).  With a rivet, you get a really similar look, but it's more forgiving because it only requires one piece of tubing, rather than lining up three pieces for a hinge.

The hinged bail was done entirely with telescoping tubing (placing a smaller tube inside the hinge to hold the pieces together).  The hinge mechanism was created from three pieces of larger tube held in place by a single piece of smaller tubing that fits inside.  The rivet is created by flaring the ends of the smaller tube so that can't slip out.

Riveted bails can be attached either with telescoping tubing or with wire through the piece that is soldered to the setting for the stone.  I decided to do one of each.

The acorn pendant was simple.  A small piece of tube soldered to the top of the bezel, and a wire with balled ends to hold it on.

The two part rivet - with both tubing and wire - was more involved, but not really that much more complicated, especially after making a hinge.

After fabricating the bezel and wings for Heimlich (yes, I'm going to call the pendant by its name) I used a small piece of tubing to connect the three pieces.  Then, I connected the bail through the tube - so that the pendant, wings and bail can all move independently.

The rest of the day involved things I do all the time - filing, polishing, setting the stone and finishing.  At the end of day two, I had four new pieces of jewelry...and was on notice from De that I had to step out of  my comfort zone and push myself on the last day of class.

Until next time - when I'll finish my story.

06.11.08 Let's Move - Kinetic Jewelry, Part 1

Photo credit: Hannah Wilson, CSJA

Although I'm always learning and improving my skills when I'm working in the studio, it had been quite a while since I taken a class. I was thrilled when I saw that De Pastel (my instructor for 201 - intermediate fabrication) would be teaching over a weekend right around my birthday!

We touched on kinetics at the end of 201, doing simple rivets and a hinge, and the riveted hollow form earrings from that class are among my favorites and I wear them often...but I hadn't touched tubing since, and I was excited about the opportunity to re-learn and improve on these techniques.

De sent us an email asking for ideas and the projects we had in mind.  She wrote "there are so many kinetic options in our field, this will allow me to hone the class on specific techniques you all want to learn and give you all the most information for your time in class."

I had two things I knew I wanted to do...the first was to remake a pair of turquoise earrings with the same riveted earwires as the hollow forms, and the second was to do another hinge (I was never happy with the one on 201 pendant - mostly because even though it looked fine, I got too much solder on it so the bail didn't move).

I love the stones in these earrings - but they were an early attempt at bezel setting, and because of their depth they never hung properly from the jump ring at the back.  So I pried them out of the silver and started over.

Two years on from the first attempt (at both the earrings and working with tubing) it's safe to say that I am a much better - and faster - metalsmith.  By lunchtime (halfway through the first day) and I had rebuilt the earrings, and now they looked like I wanted them to!

I was on to the next project - a hinged bail, a lot like the one I had done previously, but hopefully with a better result.  My recollection was that this was a really difficult task - and I expected that the pendant I had designed for this project would take up most of the remaining two and a half days.


I had given this particular piece a lot of thought.  Because the stone was rectangular, like a door, and the bail would be hinged (also, like a door), I wanted to create a pendant that looked like a mezuzah (the prayer scrolls mounted on the door frames of Jewish homes).

I started with the setting for the stone.  Rather than my typical bezel, I wanted to do a type of tab setting known as "score and fold" - which is exactly what it sounds like.  I had done the piercing (the Hebrew letter Shin) a few days before class, so I was able to move directly into forming the metal to hold the stone.

Just as it had been with the earrings, cutting the tubing and getting it soldered to the setting wasn't nearly as daunting as I had anticipated...

so, there I was at the end of the first day, with both of my planned projects finished.   It was a good feeling - but it meant I had to take my tired brain home and come up with something to do next!

Until next time (when I'll tell you more about the weekend).