Silver Hollow Form Pendant and Earrings

I recently finished my first sterling silver hollow form pendant. In my last post I said how much I love the look of hollow form pieces - the 3D solidness of them despite being hollow. Anyway I still love them after making my first version in silver!

I didn't take any photos this time but I promise to do so next time when I'm planning to make another one with a bezel set cab on the front. I used 24g/0.5mm sheet that I etched using nail varnish as the resist to create a dot pattern. I used a small brush for the nail varnish and managed to get it all over my fingers (course I did). I discovered you get a neater, rounder dot (which is so important to me because I'm slightly weird!) if you load the brush so it's almost but not quite dripping, hence the messy fingers. I bought some 5mm 24g/0.5mm strip from Cookson Gold for the frame or walls of the hollow form which is a bit extravagant I suppose as I could cut it myself but it just makes it a bit quicker to do.

I found the soldering easier to do than on the copper version. I use steel T pins to hold the frames down firmly onto the sheet and I did sand the sheet this time as well as annealing and flattening it with a rawhide mallet. I also used a different flux than usual - Tenacity 5 instead of Auflux. I like Auflux but being a liquid it tends to run everywhere so you need to apply it several times to make sure everything is covered. The Tenacity flux is a powder you mix with water to a paste consistency so it stays put. Incidently I discovered there is a burlesque dancer called Tenacity Flux - good name!

The solder flowed well all round both frames so I didn't have to do any further soldering to fill gaps. One problem I did encounter was fire stain - that greyish/purple staining caused by oxidation within the silver because of too much heat in one spot for too long. I did struggle with the Tenacity flux to know if the solder had actually flowed - it behaves slightly differently to the Auflux and I didn't notice the solder flow so probably held the heat on the silver for too long causing the fire stain. I did manage to remove it with sanding discs and my Dremel so it wasn't a catastrophe plus using liver of sulphur would help cover it up too if you didn't want to sand it out.
I did my usual and started finishing the pendant before I'd finished soldering on the bail and heart so had to sand the edges twice to remove the fire stain. One day I will learn to leave the finishing till after I've finished soldering! The heart was made from a fine silver ball that I hammered then filed into a heart shape. I think it adds a touch of cuteness to the pendant. The final shape of the pendant kind of forms itself - I start off with a shape for the frames them tweak them once they're soldered until I'm happy. I prefer free-form but I do want to try more of a flower/wavy edge shape soon.

The pendant feels fairly substantial at 6.2g despite being made from a thin gauge of silver which is handy as it means I won't need to get it hallmarked. I made some simple silver hollow form disc earrings too....... slightly easier than the pendant!

I was busy helping to paint the living room and dining room last week so didn't get a chance to make anything so you can probably guess how much I'm itching to get my torch and some metal out and start playing again this week.

My next post will be about how I made a hollow form pendant with bezel set cab with the promised photos :D

My First Copper Hollow Form Pendant And The Mistakes I Made

I finished my first "proper" copper hollow form pendant last week. I say proper as I'd made 1.5 practice pendants beforehand to get the feel of doing them. The half was my first attempt and it went ok up to the point where I pierced out the hole in the centre after soldering the first piece of sheet to the frames. After piercing out the hole I then for some reason started to pierce out the rest of it which would have left me with basically the frames again (!) I did realize my mistake quite quickly.............
My second attempt went much better apart from quite a few gaps in the solder seam on both sides despite soldering one side FOUR times! Resoldering one area to fill the gap caused some other areas of solder to reflow and the solder to run off completely leaving even more gaps! I quickly decided I needed something to hold the frames and flat sheet together so the join was tighter and ordered some T pins...........

 First attempt....... looks ok-ish from this angle

Gaps in the solder seam

Despite the smallish gaps which were a bit annoying the pendant did look ok and I finished it by making a coiled wire bail and soldering it to the back. I then thought the coil bail stuck out too much and had a bit of a brain storm and decided to hammer it so the three coils were more oval shaped than round and you can probably guess where this is going........

 
Hammering the bail did flatten the coils nicely. It also very nicely created a dent in the back of my HOLLOW pendant. Sigh.... I won't do that again........ever :D
 

I did manage to finish the third pendant without too much stress or dentage. The T pins did help a lot with keeping the join tight although I still had to solder a second time to fill a gap on one side. I used some copper I textured at college with a skeleton leaf for the front and soldered two flattened fine silver balls onto the front.

 Close up with no solder gaps!

I finished the pendant with a copper bail which is the first time I've ever made this type of bail. It was a simple "p" shape soldered at the top and back. I was quite pleased with how it turned out once I decided how to hang it. I was originally going to place the bail so the pendant hung the other way but I needed some space for the silver dots towards the bottom so went for the wider option.

Coming soon....my first version in lovely silver :D

More Bezel Setting Practice And Hollow Form Earrings

I wanted to do a bit more bezel setting to improve how long it takes me to do. I am getting quicker at it, really! I sometimes "waste" time cleaning/ filing/sanding bezels up then change my mind about what I'm going to do with them and realize I will have to sand them again after another lot of soldering. Oh well :D

I thought I'd try decorating one of the bezels by stamping. I wasn't sure if it would work as the bezel wire is pretty thin at 0.3mm so I stamped fairly lightly. I didn't want to risk stamping too heavily and the bezel splitting and I also left a gap where the join was going to be. I think it worked ok with these simple turquoise cabochon earrings.

I stamped in the gap I'd left after soldering but not directly over the solder join. I think the stamped effect looks "right" with the turquoise.

I'm currently practicing making hollow form pendants in copper and will move onto silver in the next couple of days. I love the 3D look of hollow form pieces - they look so solid but are lovely and light.
I made a pair of simple hollow form earrings in copper recently before I started on the pendants. Simple as in a domed disc soldered to a flat base which is then trimmed and finished.

The pendants I'm making consist of a frame plus a smaller frame in the centre which are soldered to a flat sheet on both sides. The middle of the smaller frame is pierced out after the first side is soldered and the edges are trimmed at the end. They are a bit tricky to solder to make sure the solder join is complete all the way round on both sides and around the smaller frame in the middle but I'm getting better and will post about them as soon as I've made a couple in silver.

I soon discovered when I made these earrings that it's important to make sure you rinse all of the pickle out of them. You need the hole to prevent the piece from exploding when you solder the earwire (or anything further) onto them but that also means they get full of any liquid you put them into! I find leaving them to soak in clean water and bicarb for 15 minutes after I take them out of the pickle does the trick.
I've also started using hard sterling wire for the earwires instead of dead soft and find it is a bit sturdier for this type of earwire despite being annealed when it's soldered and it worked out slightly cheaper than the dead soft which is always a good thing!!

Sterling Silver Hoops with Glass Cabochons

I went through a hoop phase a couple of weeks ago when I just had to make some hoop inspired jewellery. I quite often get these urges - sometimes it's for enamel, sometimes it's etching, it just depends. I'm currently in the grip of a hollow form phase but I'm having to wait for supplies before I can go any further which is a bit annoying but does serve to make me think about it a bit more before diving in!

I wanted to continue my bezel setting practice so I added cabochons to the hoop earrings and pendants. I stamped a circle design onto the hoops and added a jump ring at the top then pierced out the part of the hoop in the centre of the jump ring to make a cute hanging hole.

The glass cabochons are from a Turkish shop on Etsy and are lovely!  They remind me of jelly sweets.

Tip! Put a piece of aluminium foil behind the glass cabs before setting them. The foil gives them a luminous glow in the light and avoids the backs of the bezels darkening and dulling the colour due to the silver oxidizing over time. Cutting the foil discs neatly to avoid too many creases is easier said than done! Luckily these were the same size as one of the holes on my disc cutter so I used that to cut them. One thing I soon realized was that the silver on the bottom of the bezel needs to be completely smooth otherwise any bumps (from solder, etc) will transfer through the foil and show on the bottom of the glass cabs as dark patches. I had to abort two pairs because of this before I figured out what was going on. I think the solution is to add a disc of sanded copper under the foil so then you know it will definitely be completely flat and smooth.

 I love the delicate ghostly colour of the pink glass.

A simple pair using the greeny-turquoise colour glass. This is the first time I soldered jump ring links onto the tops of bezels to thread the earwires through and thankfully I managed ok and it worked. It can be fiddly and I'm not that great yet with the combination of soldering and fiddly. Still learning!

Handmade Copper Bangles

Not usually something that crosses my radar being a committed earring freak, strangely I had a sudden urge a couple of weeks ago to make some bangles. I made the first one at night school as I needed something to do in the last couple of weeks that wouldn't take too long. I enjoyed making it - it was a hammered round bangle made from 2.6mm copper wire which I soldered three coils of thinner wire to.

 I soon discovered that soldering the coils onto it meant I couldn't reshape it. I used paste solder for the coils as I thought it would be easier but two attempts and some burnt blobby messes later I went back to sheet solder which worked. In the meantime the bracelet had been bent out of shape slightly plus it needed a good hammering to work harden it as it was a little "bendy" having been well annealed with my soldering attempts!

So having learned what not to do - I never got on with paste solder so why I used it I don't know! - I bought a bracelet mandrel and made a few more -

They are made from 2.6mm and 3.25mm copper wire and are textured with a hammer and stamped designs. Really fun and easy to make.

The twisted wire bangles were a bit more work. I rolled the wire through the rolling mill at college then twisted the flattened wire using a vice and big pair of pliers. Matching the join and soldering was a challenge - I discovered that wedging the solder in the join was the best bet as it had a habit of sliding round the twist as I started to heat up the wire. Thinking about it now pick soldering the join probably would've been a better option and even easier!

A YouTube Gem I Have To Share!

 

If you're a budding metalsmith who wants to watch decent how-to videos made by an experienced jeweller then have a look at Soham Harrison on YouTube. I discovered his videos a couple of weeks ago and love watching them! 

Easy to follow - in other words no weird music/total silence/blurred images or hands in the way, Soham's 141 videos cover a huge range of projects including claw setting, bangles, rings, bezel setting, sweat soldering and die forming plus some on how to use various tools and then there's the one on making creme brulee :D

He has a very calm manner and explains things clearly plus explains what to do if something doesn't go as it should. They're great to watch if you need a bit of inspiration too.