Transcripts
1. Introduction: In this tutorial, I'm going to show you my process of how to make one of these beautiful, hammered sterling silver gems though necklaces. This is an awesome project and that contains a lot of cool skills like soldiering, texturing, shaping, more soldiering, and just generally a lot of satisfying moments like this. The tutorial will cover a lot of basic stuff as well as interesting techniques like stone setting and how to oxidize silver. So grab yourself a hot drink. Enjoyed the tutorial, and hopefully I'll see what the Workbench.
2. Preparing The Bezel Wire: So let's take a look at the raw materials are used for this project. First up, the star of the show is a beautiful blue lace AG aid cabbage on. My girlfriend got this from Bali. She says it's some kind of Botswana, our gate. And this is actually like my favorite shape, cabbage on a sort of tooth shape. I absolutely love it. For the back of the pendant actually used sheet of silver. This was 0.7 mil thick, but you can use thicker if you like. And then finally, to make the basil setting, I used this thin silver basil wire, which is super flexible and easy to use. So the first step was to figure out how much bezel, why I needed a cut to wrap around the stone. And in order to do this, I basically cut a piece of thin piece of paper, was roughly about the same thickness as my bezel wire. And then wrap that around the stone as tight as I could and security it down with a bit of print stick. Then I left with hopefully the perfect amount of length of basil, why they would need to cut. So basically after snipping the paper, I laid the paper out on the bezel wire. I made a little mark with a pencil and then use the snippets to snip myself a piece of wire. Next, I took a file and just filed down both of the edges that I just snipped of the bezel wire just to make sure they were nice and flat. So when they were salted together, you know, they'd have a nice pretty seem. And then I just have a quick little test test wrapper around the stone caber, Sean. And it turned out I've got the correct amount of basil wire first time, which was awesome.
3. Soldering The Bezel Wire: So the next job was to solve the seam of that bezel wire. And to do this, I use hard silver sold because PAL has a slightly higher melting point than easy silver sold on basically, this was the first of two joints that I would be soldiering on the piece. So it made sense to use hard sold to solve the puzzle. So let me show you my first and unsuccessful attempts at soldiering this embezzled wire. As I feel like it's worthwhile knowing how not to do things rather than how to get them right first time. So basically the first time a child has tried to solve this, I sold it in the same way as I would like a silver ring. But what I found was as I heated the bezel wire would the torch, everything was gone according to plan. But then the bezel, why would kind of get misshapen and then the scene wouldn't line up. So this is the second attempt to follow I did it and this is the one that makes more sense. Now. So I basically put a little bit of flux onto the scene we saw with our mixin Arab earlier. Then I put a piece of hard sold down onto the soldier and block and then basically place the bezel wire ring on top of the shoulder piece. And of the theory behind this is that as you heat the piece, the flux will kind of liquid eyes. And there's that kind of like a capella reaction that kind of polls that sold up into the joint when it liquefies. So let me see if that worked. You'll start to see as a kind of heats up solved, caramelize is. And then as enough heat comes in, now pizzas sold or they're sitting on, is sucked right up into the scene for a successful sold joint. And lo and behold, it was the perfect fit for the stone as well. When I'm now for my favorite part of any silver smith and project, peddling the sticker off the silver.
4. Texturing The Backing Plate And More Soldering: Solve the basil wire. And I just kinda pop the stone and to keep it in shape. And then place that down on my piece of flat silver sheet and just kinda figured out a nice area where it would sit. Then I proceeded to basically cut out Enough silver sheets to accommodate the stove. Jeweler's saw that I marked around the stone with a pencil so I can see on the sheet sort of where that stone would set. Don't know if you can see that properly. And then I decided that the piece would be textured. And so I kind of drew around that Basil setting. So like a texture the sheet before soldiering, the basil on to the sheet. That makes sense. So with the rough outline of where the stone would set on the sheet, I just took it under or hammer. And fairly self-explanatory really just hammered the sheet to make sure there was lots of nice dense. But I was just kinda like hammer inside of the line that I've marked so that, you know, I wouldn't be able to solve there and onto the silver sheep without a problem. So before soldiering the silver basil wire onto the sheet, I just wanted to get a nice flat edge. Make sure that, you know, the basil why would sit flush on the sheet. So I just laid down a piece of 240 grit Emory paper. My bench just sanded down one of the edges just to make sure that it was indeed a set flattened flush with our silver sheet, which it did. It was time to solve the basil wire to the sheet silver. Before I did this, I just took a bit of scrap silver basil wire or middle or swell and then rested the sheet silver on top of the swirl, which would allow me to get the heat from the blow torch underneath the piece for heating. And then to actually sold the piece that both pieces together, I used easy silver salt. So with my sheet silver resting on top of the swirly bit of basil, I apply just a small amount of flux around the marking I made earlier, and then proceeded to put down all of my little pieces of easy silver. So older, I think there were about 15 of them and all. And that it was time to fire up the blow torch and gets older. And you can see from this fantastic shot how is able to get the blow torch or heat underneath the piece to solder. Soldering was pretty straightforward on this. Actually. I just used a single blow torch to begin with just a heat the piece evenly or just kept and move him. Kind of tried to get most of the heat flow underneath the piece. And then eventually when things started to heat up, when the flux start to get a bit fluffy, I brought in a second blowtorch to kinda help. You'll get the salt out of Run. Definitely made a big difference. Been able to get heat underneath the piece, the solver like this. So if you can't get yourself like a stem for a Bunsen burner or something, then I think that would definitely be worthwhile. If not, this is the getaway to do it.
5. Shaping The Pendant: So after soldiering the bezel to the sheet, it was looking pretty rough. And so to clean off some of the oxidization and any remnants of the solder in flux. I used a pickling solution. This is just like a mild acid. And so I just used the directions on the Mandanten essentially to mix up some piccolo and mix, put the piece in there for about half an hour and it came out nice and clean, ready for final shaping. It was time to finally start shaping the pendant. So I just took a pencil and drew roughly a rough outline around the basil cup just to get an idea really of what kind of shape of upended would be in the end. And then after that, I just took my jeweler's saw and cut it out. I cut out the rough shape with a dual resource basically. And then after kinda cut it away all the beds that I didn't need, I was looking quite rough. So to kind of smooth off the edges, a refinement of our shape. I just used the number 2. I'm a number for file. Just kind of going around the edges, just, just refining the shape and make it look a bit nicer. The next thing to do was clean up the seam of the bezel wire. So I just took my number 4 file and just went over that likely just to kind of make it look a little bit neater. And finally, I drilled a hole in the top of the piece with drill and drill. But really, I'm sure you could use a hole punch or something more sophisticated. But I just used a drill.
6. Making The Jump Ring: Before setting the stone and completing the pendant, needed to trim down the walls of the bezel. As the bezel was just a little bit too high for the stone of this stage. With any bezel setting. You don't want the bezel to be kind of too high. Otherwise, sentence stone will just be a bit of a nightmare. And you don't want it to be too small because then the basil will wrap over the top of the stone to keep it in place. And so I marked a rough line of what I thought would be a good height for the basil a cup. And then just took certain files and some sandpaper to trim it down to an appropriate height. And also kind of give you a piece of it, a much nicer finish. Next, I took a bit of 500 grit Emory paper and sanded over the edges of the piece, the seams of the basil, and just generally tried to make it a little bit more presentable. And for the back, I just used a wire brush as I kinda wanted them back to kind of look a bit rough. For those pendant, I decided to make a simple jump ring. It could hang off the chain. And so to do that, I just took a piece of 0.8 mil silver round wire, wrapped it around the handle of a file to a half like a coil basically. And then I just cuts with a straight line down the coil with a jeweler's saw. Michal, I ended up with a little round coil like this. Then I kind of put them in place with a couple of pliers onto the piece, made sure that the edges lined up perfectly. And then just use the piece of easy silver solder. Just sold of that jump bring shut. So that, that way then you are to allow the pendant to hand off a chain.
7. Oxidising And Setting The Stone: I wanted to oxidize this piece to help bring out all of the details from the texture. And in order to do that, I used an oxidizing solution called liver of sulfur. Here's the piece before oxidizing. And then basically I just followed the guidelines on the bottle to make up an old liver of sulfur and water solution. Put the piece in there for about 10 minutes and it came out like a nice dark gray black color. Um, and then before handling it, I just neutralized the piece in some baking soda and water and it was ready to set the stone. The stone was a perfect fit. And actually to push the edges of the basil wire over the stone to completely secure it in place. I used a bezel rocker. And if you imagine the face of a clock, I'd like to start by pushing in the wire a 12 o'clock and then go opposite. It's six o'clock and then nine o'clock and three o'clock. And then kind of go to the numbers in between. So good luck to an egg. 104 on to continue going around until you basically push the basil Y0 over the stone. I was a pretty gentle at this stage. I would like to start with the corners first, as it just helps to kind of push that Basil wire over the stone nice and equally. And then it looks really professional, manner and presentable. So after pushing that bears a wire over the stone as equally as I could. I use another tool, guess the core burnishing tool, to kind of go over and rub the basil wire. So it was kinda more smooth that any kinks and just wrapped around us stone really nicely. Hopefully keep it in place forever. And finally, to bring out all those beautiful hammered textures, I took a piece of 500 grit Emory paper sanded over the whole piece, revealing all of the lovely textures and just kind of bringing the piece to life. And this is what I was left with. So thank you so much for watching. I hope that you enjoyed this. I hope you learned a lot. If you have any questions, please feel free to drop me a comment and I'm more than happy to help. Um, and in the meantime, I hope you enjoy your tools aren't getting creative on your workbench. And hopefully, I'll see you in the next one.
Danial Rees, Jewelry designer + Youtuber
