Make Moon Earrings!

1. Intro moon earrings : Hi there. I'm Kelly diamond from metamorphoses jewelry studio. Today I want to show you how to make moon shaped posts using your disk cutter. If you can get your hands on some pattern metal, copper, bronze, brass, silver, it does not matter whatever you have handy you can use. We are going to use a 22 gauge copper in this project that we've rolled through the rolling mill to put a little pattern on it. And then we're going to solder some posts onto it. So it's a fun, simple project. You'll need a few different types of tools and equipment that we're going to go for next. But I hope you join us in learning how to make your own posts style earrings. 2. Materials for moon earrings: Here are some of the materials you're going to need for this project. First, you'll need some pattern. Copper. This one I ran through the rolling mill with a stars and moon shape on it, which I thought would be fun for the moon earrings. You're also going to need the earing posts because we're gonna be making a post style earring. Earring nuts. And these are the two that go together. If you were to order them from Rio Grande, you're going to need a disk cutter. Here. I have the Pepe just tkinter, but you can use whatever type of disk cutter you have available. And you're going to need some soldering tools. You will need a fireproof surface like a ceramic tile, a soldering board, a third hand to hold your posts in. A butane torch. Here we have the Dustin blowtorch, some handy flux or whatever flux that you like, some pickle. And a little while you'll need some tongs, copper tongs for the pickle, steel tongs to remove your pieces from the board. Some water for your folks if you use that type of flux, a quenching bowl, steel bench block, a rawhide, nylon malate. If you're going to put a patina on your pieces, then you will need something to patina at words such as liver of sulfur. I like to use the Renaissance wax to seal it. After I put the liver of sulfur on the metal file, some flat nose pliers and a little fine grit sandpaper if you're going to be using the liver of sulfur. Okay, So that kind of gives you an overview of all the tools that we'll need. And if I forgotten anything, which I sometimes do, then I will add that in as we go along. 3. Cutting the moons: Let's get started cutting our wounds out. So the first thing that we wanna do is we want to cut a circle into our metal so that we can then use that circle to cut our moons, which is a really pretty easy and fun thing to do with your disk cutter. So I'm going to use this size, which is the five, five-eighths. And what I'm gonna do is just open up my discover enough to get my metal in, place my mental into the disk counter so that when I look down from the top that I can see that all of my edges are covered. That there aren't any edges that don't have any black space is showing around. And actually what I wanna do for this, because when you cut through it's going to leave a little ridge. So I want to flip my metal upside down so that the ridge is on the backside of my metal, on the front. And place my data in here, you can add a little bit of cutting blue to this. I do that every few times, so let's do that already. I'm seeing two things that I forgot to put on the list. One is the puppy Lube or some other type of lubricant and the other is my bras, which you always want to use a brass metal on smaller tools like this. Because it will prevent your protects your tool basically, and it prevents it from mushrooming out over time as you're using it. And so we're gonna get that all situated and then we're just going to give it a couple of wax to cut through. What we'll do now is that we have a hole cut in our metal and we want to get a moon shape. So if you look through there, you can see as I adjust my metal, I can get a thin moon. I can get a wider moon. Looking right through the piece that I just cut and using that edge that I just cut. So I can do a bigger one if I want to do it using that shape. See that there. Or I could do a smaller moon right in there. But I'm gonna go with the same five-eighths size. And I just want to look through and get the style of the moon that I want to put a urethane pad underneath. I also didn't mention that in the supplies, but that is also very important. So I want my mom right about there in a little smudge, tighten it down and take a look. Sorry, I'm off camera. Okay. So there's the moon that I have coming through right there. Pretty happy with. Actually, I have not. I'm going to move it in. I'm pretty happy, but I'm going to move it a little bit about that. Okay. I like that moon. So once again, just couldn't put my die in and hammer it down. So this is kind of a wider moon. If I don't like it, I can just cut another one that's more narrow because all I have to do is just keep sliding my muddle through. And I can continue cutting wounds. Can cut as many as you like. I'm going to go with that or not. Yeah, I'm wanna do to that. Looked like that. So we're going to cut one more than its about that same thickness. Just going to unlock my slider. Let's get it situated so that it's approximately the same thickness. I kinda just hold my other one up for a referral. Little thinner. Let's give that a try and see if it matches. Sometimes you have to make a few just to get them to match properly. Those are my two little let's see how they look when you put them together. That's from the other side. That looks pretty good to me. So what I wanna do, you want them to be the inverse and the lay him down here. And what I wanna do next is just flatten them out a little bit. As you can see, it got a little bit of a curve there. So that is where steel bench block comes in handy. We can just put it here using our rawhide or class. Okay, and then they're nice and flat. And next, the only thing we need to do is smooth out our edges with our nail. Metal file, get everything nice. So any bridges off the back with our metal file and make sure that these aren't pointy and sharp. And then you'll be ready to get them cleaned and ready for soldering. 4. Filing and smoothing: Next we want to just file our edges and smooth out any rough spots that we have on the back that may have been left from our disk cutter. So first, I'm just going to take off the edges of where these are pointy and I still want to be curved. So I'm just going to follow the direction of my metal. So you can see that I'm swiping my hand like the sweeping motion over the metal so that it's still curved but it's smoothing it out as I go so that it's not as sharp. And sometimes you will get ridge along the sides here. You can just take a little now file a little sanding, stick, a little sandpaper, and go over those edges to smooth those. Once I have that done, I'm just going to clean these with a little rubbing alcohol to remove any grease or oils that remain on there. So it'll be nice and clean for soldering. So I'm just going to wipe them down and then try to avoid touching them. And then they're ready to go onto the soldering cord after they're dry. 5. Soldering the post: Now that everything is clean, it's time to get our host soldered onto our piece. So I'm going to take my post and put it into the third hand with the flat side of the post facing down. A little pad is going to be facing down. Then I want to get it aligned right about where I want it, which I need it to be making contact with that metal. I can't have it floating up in the air. So right now, if you can see it's touching the Copper and I want it to be straight up and down. So it looks ready for me to put my flux on. So I'm just going to lift it up in the air. Paint. My flux on. We'll put a little flux on the bottom of the post as well. Then I'm going to use, here is my solder. I'm going to use my paintbrush to pick up a chip. In theory. Then I'm going to paint that little chip. So in this case I'm using a flat chip of solder. You can use wire solder for this and place it along the edge where the two pieces intersect if you prefer. You can also use paste solder for this. I know that is frowned upon in the metal smith community, but I do know people who prefer to use the pace Center for doing posts and small jobs. So as you can see, you have the metal, you have the little chip apart solder. And you have your posts, and you want your post to be straight up and down as much as possible. I'm going to check it from a few angles and make sure that it's straight up and down. That looks pretty good to me. And then I'm ready to heat it. I'm going to begin by just warming. I'm going to spend my time. A little pool appear right around the post and then it's done. I can lift it up and I can put the whole thing in the country. 6. Patina, Polish, Seal: So after we quenched our earrings, I put them into the pickle to get most of the oxides off of them. This one still has a little bit of oxide left on it. And I'm just going to use my polishing pad to see if I can get that off. Because what I wanna do next is get these ready to just go into the liver of sulfur. So I'm going to make them all really blackened. And then I'll be able to remove some of that black stuff with my sandpaper. So that does look a little bit better. I'm just going to get my liver of sulfur mixture ready? And what I do is I heat some water in an old jar that I don't care anything about and they can only, I only use it for the liver of sulfur. And I'm gonna put a little squirt of this XL jail into my hot water. It's hot but not boiling. So I'm just going to throw a little bit of this in there. So big blob. Keep a paper towel handy to just wipe the rim of this off as you have. If you've ever used liver of sulfur, you would know this stuff smells really bad. It is quite polar. And then I have a fork that I use to stir this around with that I see that I left on the other side of the studio, so I'm going to drop those in and I'm going to grab by four. And then I'm just going to once they're done, once they're black and I'm just going to rinse them in some regular water. Now I will tell you one of our other instructors, she likes to put these in baking soda after the liver of sulfur. So as you can see, they're very black. I just put them in regular water, but the baking soda will stop that reaction that it has. But I find the water does the same thing. And I'm just going to use some sandpaper to remove the oxides to it will no longer be reactive. So I have my moons all blackened. I'm gonna get them dried off. Then I don't want them to be totally black. You could keep them totally black if you wanted to. I want that pattern to show through. So I'm going to take a little bit of this is just a 600 grit sandpaper, a fine grit. And I'm just going to take off some of that patina so that I can see my little star and mood pattern. So I have taken my sandpaper and my polishing pad and lay them flat and just gone over the surface of both of these. So this one will remove any of the black oxide stuff that I put on there and then my pad is going to shine everything. I found that was a little easier way to hold it and get an even shine on there. So as you can see, it's getting nice and shiny. So once I have that where I want, there's a couple of things that I want to do. One is that I want to make sure that this post is straight and then it's work hardened. So that is where my these little flat nose pliers are gonna come in handy. I'm just going to grasp that. Wire, the posts. I'm going to straighten it out and then I'm gonna give a little quarter turn and pull it away from the base as I do that, and that is just going to work hard and that little post-pay. There we go. I'm just grasping it, pulling away with this right hand and giving it a little quarter turn of a twist, making sure everything's nice and straight. Then after everything is polished to my liking, I'm gonna go ahead and just seal that with some Renaissance wax so my fingers are dirty. I'm just going to use a clean paper towel to put a little bit of wax on both of these. I'm going to do the front and the back. Wax can also be used for cleaning, so it will remove some of that oxide as well if you want to get in there and do a little bit more. Same thing on both. I just let it sit for a minute and then I take a dry part of my paper towel and I just buff it off so that it's back to being shiny. But it's also protected a little bit now with that wax, which will hopefully lock that patina in for awhile until it wears off. I'm just going to wipe off the excess. Make sure everything again is straight on here. My wires are straight. Okay. Then I can go ahead and put my little ear nuts on. And my earrings will be complete. There is post number one with the little butterfly back. There is post number two, little butterfly it back there. We have our completed hearings. Can get a good angle on them there so you can see the shine. Maybe not. They are yeah. They are ready to go. 7. Final thoughts: I think that wraps it up for today's class. I hope you enjoyed this process and that you will practice adding posts to various things, whether it be a sheet of metal or some wire, you can create all kinds of things. Now that you have this process under your belt. So please feel free to post what you made and do check out the materials list that I posted as well. It includes the materials that I mentioned in the beginning, along with the ones that I forgot to mention. So they are all linked there. And I hope that you have a good time making these. Please post what you made so we can cheer you on.