Silversmithing for Beginners: Making a Seasoning Spoon in Solid Silver

1. Making Seasoning Spoon in Solid Sterling Silver: Would you like to learn silversmithing? Do you want to have a seasoning spoon make of solid sterling silver to spice up your life? In this class, you will learn basic silver smithing skills, making a simple seasoning spoon. Before taking this class, it will be very helpful if you have previous experience of working with silver or copper. If you have never worked with silver before, I have your back. Simply watch my two other skillshare classes. We'll give you all the foundation knowledge for this one. Throughout the entire process, I will share with you lots of my personal tips and in depth details of jery making tricks. Based on my over two decades of firsthand experience working with precious metal, everything you learn from this class is universally applicable to any jery making or silver smithing projects you are working with at the moment or going to do in the future. We are going to use solid sterling silver in this class. But all the skills you learn in this class can be used in copper, brass, and solid gold. The materials and tools you need in this class have been listed in the PDF file, which can be found in the class resource section. The templates you will need can also be found in the same place. If you have watched my Youtube videos or Instagram Wheels, you will see lots of short videos showing my making process without any explanation of why I was doing this and that. On skill share, I share my reasons for every single step. My name is Yi. Join me in this class and I will walk you through every single step of the entire making process with my in depth personal thoughts. 2. Class Project: The class project is to make a silver seasoning spoon. The entire two list and the scoop template can be downloaded from the class resource section to help you track your making progress. I have also included an outline of the steps you can follow to make your own spoon. You can find that in the project description section. When you're making your spoon, don't forget to snap some pictures of the making process and show off your finished spoon in the class project gallery or on social media. We would love to see you having fun in the making process. By finishing this project, you will have a handmade seasoning spoon in solid sterling silver. Each of the upcoming classes explains every single step in the making process with full details. Let's get started. 3. Safety Video: Before we start safety, first, let's quickly go through some potential danger when working with precious metals and jewelry, making tools and how to protect yourself. Silver melt at 961.8 degrees Celsius. Be careful not to burn yourself after our object is heated with a torch. When either melting scrap or soldering. If you want to move it, make sure to hold it firmly with a pair of tweezers. Or simply leave it in place until it cools down to room temperature before touching it with your bare hands. When handling tools such as jeweler saw files and drills all have sharp edges. Always be careful to avoid injuring yourself when using any drills. Make sure your fingers are not behind the drill. Always wear air protectors during hammering or when loud noise occurs. Make sure to have an extractor fan to suck away the dust and debris during the polishing and cleaning process. Always make sure your work area is well ventilated when using any kind of gas or chemical in the making process. The safe typical I use in all my videos is mixed with table salt, rice vinegar, and tap water. For some people, this mixture might cause skin irritation. I would suggest using a pair of bamboo chopsticks and rubber gloves to handle it. In this case, always make sure to wear a pair of safety goggles to protect your eyes from metal dust particles or flying debris through the entire process. If you have long hair, it is really important to have it tied up to avoid getting caught in any rotary motor. Remember, it's super important to stay safe. Now let's get started. 4. Cutting the Pattern: In this lesson, we're going to make the pattern of a spoon in sterling silver. We will learn how to turn a random piece of silphur into the shape you want. This is a piece of recycled sterling silfur I have left over from another project. It is thicker than we need for the spoon I'm going to make. It is too narrow for the spoon pattern and it is not in the shape of a spoon basically. It's not fit for purpose. We are going to transform it into a flat spoon shape. First, we're going to change its thickness and width, soften this piece of silver. We heat it up with a kitchen torch for how long to heat it and how to heat it. Please refer to my other skill share class called Silversmithing for beginners, making a silver coffee scoop from scrap. It covers all the details, which I won't repeat here next. To make it wider and thinner, we put it through the rolling mill because it is long enough. We just need to make it a little wider. We feed it through the rolling mill in this direction. We are aiming at No. 0.9 MM thick. If we were to change its thickness for more than 1.5 MM, we will need to soften this piece of silphver. Again, as this is not the case, I'm going to keep rolling till it reaches ne 0.9 MM bit by bit. Our silphur is going down to what we are looking for. The spoon pattern is provided in a PDF file. You can find it in the class resource section. You can simply download it and print it off. After that, we cut a piece of double size tape big enough to cover the spoon pattern and stick it on the back of the paper. Cut the pattern. Now using a pair of sess, peel the plastic off. We are going to use this sticker to guide us when cutting the sterling silver. I can put this sticker in the middle of this piece of silver, but I would like to stick it in this corner. In this way I will have a bigger piece of blank silver for the next project. To get the shape out, I'm going to use a jewelers. So if this is your first time using a jewelers, so please see my skillshare class jewelry making for beginners making color pencil jewelry at home. It shows how to set up a jewelers saw and how to use it in an efficient way. The trick to cut it as precise as possible is that instead of cutting on the black line, we guide the saw blade right next to the black line. In this way, we can still see the black line to guide our cutting. Here we are, clean of the silver saw dust and we have a flat silver spoon shape. If I flip it over, you can see the pattern is very close to a perfect circle. That's exactly what we want. In this lesson, we have learned first how to transform a random piece of silver to the pattern we need. Second, the trick of how to cut the precise shape using a jeweler sore. In the next lesson, we will learn how to open holes on this spoon shape. 5. Opening the Holes: In this lesson, we're going to open two holes on the flat pattern we made in the previous class. There are two dots on the side with the paper sticker. They show where we need to drill the holes. This is a metal scriber. First, I use it to make a mark in the center of the two black dots. This will be the guide of my next step. We want both holes to be one MM diameter. However, we will start by drilling the holes a smaller size. The reason for that is this will give us a chance to move the hole if it is slightly off line. Keep watching and I will show you how. Here I use a No. 0.7 MM twist drill. Place the tip of the drill into the mark we make with describer. And push the drill gently. There are two tricks in this process. First, keep the drill perpendicular to the silver plate. Second, try not to push too hard when we feel the drill is cutting into the metal. That's enough. Now we have both holes at No. 0.7 MM. The paper sticker has finished its job at this point and we can take it off after the paper is removed. We can see the holes are not in the line. This is a very common problem when drilling holes in such a small size. Let me show you how to correct it. First, put the silver plate on a flat surface and then we use the wrong ber, slightly bigger than the hole we need to correct. In this case, I'm using a 0.8 MM run ber. Place the wrong Ber on top of the hole we drilled earlier To enlarge the hole. In this way we can adjust the position of the hole to where we want. Two tricks here. First, keep the speed of the wrong ber high. This will prevent it from spitting. Second, hold both the silver plate and the hand drill tight. This will give you full control in the process. Now you can see both holes are aligned in the center of the plate. Next we use a one MM twist drill to make the final size by jelling the holes from a smaller size and enlarging them to the final size we want. Here are our perfectly lined up holes. In this class, you have learned first, how to open holes on silver. Second, how to correct the holes if they are not lined up. In the next lesson, we are going to make this into the scoop of our spoon. 6. Forming the Scoop: Here is the flat spoon pattern we make in the previous class. We are going to form it into an evenly domed scoop. As usual, before changing the shape of any piece of silver, we need to soften it. I'm using a kitchen porch here to heat up our silver plate. Once it cool down to room temperature, we can move on to the next step. The main tools I'm using in this lesson are a apping block and the largest apping punch in this set for the apping block I'm using the second largest hole, which is on the other side from the biggest one. Place the silver plate into the hole and then put the punch on top of the silver. Before hitting the punch with a hammer safety, first, make sure to wear a pair of good quality air protectors. Hit the end of the punch gently with the flat side of the hammer. The trick in this process is to move the silver plate around to get it evenly domed. I normally skip the entire process in my Youtube and Instagram videos, But here as you're going to learn how to make this spoon, I'm showing you the whole making process in this way. You know, if you don't get the result in under a minute, it's totally normal because it is handmade. It does take time. Well, this is our evening dome silver scoop. All the time we spend on hitting the punch gently is totally worth it. In this lesson, you have learned how to form a flat piece of silver into an evening dome scoop. In the next lesson, we're going to adjust the edges of our scoop to make it smoother. 7. Smoothing the Edges: Welcome back up to this stage. All the edges were finished, roughly by the jewelers handsaw. Earlier in this lesson, we are going to make the scoop as close to a perfect circle as possible and all the edges smooth to touch. Here I'm using a cut number zero hand file to adjust the circle. Just eye boy, the trick when filing a circle, instead of taking a straight cut, we move the file along the curve line. We want to take off all the handsaw marks on the edges. This is a handmade spoon instead of a cold precision machine cut circle. We are giving our scoop a lovely warm human touch. For the three straight edges on our little rectangular handle, we file them straight as the edge is quite rough, it's normal to get stuck to begin with. After filing it a few times, it will become smoother. Once the shape is right, we can change to use a needle file to do some small adjustment like this. Keep checking to see which parts need more work. Up to here, all edges are looking good, so we can round the two corners up on the scoop. This diagram shows my way of filing the 90 degree angle to a round the corner in an efficient way. First, we always start by moving the file straightforward to get off the sharpest angle. Then we move on to take off the other two corners. Move the file straightforward. Finally, as the corners become less sharp, we can use a rounding movement to create a smooth corner. This is how our scoop looks at this stage, even and all the edges are smooth. In this lesson, you have learned first how to use files to take off the sore cut edges on a circle. Second, an efficient way to run a sharp corner to a smooth one. In the next lesson, we are going to make the handle for our seasoning spoon. 8. Making the Handle: We have the scoop ready. Now we need a handle. This is the piece of sterling silver ingot from which I'm going to make the spoons handle. I show the details of how to turn sterling silver scrap into a piece of ingot like this. In my other skillshare class, silversmithing for beginners, making a silver coffee scoop from scrap. I won't repeat that here. That class also shows all the details of making a wire out of this ingot. As I'm making the handle from this piece of ingot, I'm going to quickly recap the main points in a few sentences. The key ideas are, first, make sure to soften the silver once for every no. 0.5 millimeter. It goes down when using the rolling mill. Second, keep checking the size of the silver wire. Third, soften the silver after every one to two holes that it is drawn through the draw plate. Fourth, take it slow. Now the wire measures two millimeter diameter. That's the size we need for our seasoning spoon. Measure it at 11 centimetres. Cut it with a snipper. This will be the handle for our spoon. It has a slight curve. We can simply adjust it by bending it straight like this. Make a mark at half a centimeter. With a permanent maker. This is how much the handle will overlap with the spoon. This mark will give us a guide in our next step when making the joint. Here is a six by six CM steel block. Use the same hammer we use earlier to flatten this half a centimeter end. Make sure to hammer both sides to make it even. Keep checking and hammering until it reaches 3.4 M. D. Here we use a pair of pliers to bend it straight and file all the sharp corners of in the way I mentioned in the previous lesion. One of the ways to tell if it's smooth enough is to touch all the edges with your fingers. If it's touched smooth, it passed the test. In this lesson, we have recapped the key concept of the wire making process. And learn how to flatten the end of the handle to make the joint for our spoon handle. In the next lesson, we're going to drill two holes to match the holes on the scoop. 9. Matching the Holes: This is the scoop we made earlier. We have drilled two holes for the joint previously. This is how our handle will overlap with the scoop. In this lesson, we are going to drill two holes on the handle to meet the two existing holes on the scoop. First we mark at two MM away from the end of the handle like this in the center, away from the edges on each side. This is where our first hole is going to be, make a dance with a metal scriber. This is where our twist drill will go. If this is your first time drilling free hand, he's the tip. I'm pushing the scriber down as hard as my two hands can to make the dance as deep as possible. The deeper the Dan is, the less chance our twist drill will slide here. You can see the mark I have made. Let's drill the hole here. I'm using a No. 0.7 MM twist drill. The dance I have made is where the tip of this twist drill should lend. This is our first hole on the handle. Next, we enlarge the hole with a one MM twist drill like this. There's no problem to make this hole meet the one on the scoop. Finding where to drill the second hole is a bit of a challenge. This pin measures no. 0.83 MM diameter and 11 MM long. We bend it at four MM away from one of the ends like this. Use this pin to go through both holes to make sure they meet. Hold the pin there with our fingers like this. And push the scriber into the second hole on the scoop until the tip of the describer reaches the handle on the other side. Next, swing the handle left and right like this. You can feel describer is scratching some lines on the handle. Now we can take everything apart. If I swim in closer, you can see where the scratches are on the handle. This is the center of the lines. Mark it there with describer. That's where we're going to drill for the second hole with a No. 0.7 MM twist drill. Let's have a closer look at these two holes. Enlarge it with the one MM twist drill. In this lesson, we have learned first how to prevent skidding when using a twist drill to drill into metal free hand. Second, how to drill a pair of holes to meet the existing ones. In the next lesson, we're going to bond the handle onto the scoop. 10. Bonding the Handle: Now we have all the holes ready. In this class, we're going to bond both the handle and the scoop together. These two holes are quite close to each other. This is the L shaped pin we make earlier. We need to bend it to a U shape like this. Try to make both sides parallel to each other. It looks like we need to bend it a little more. That's it. To push the pin in, we need the help of the players. In this way, we can put the scoop on the back of the handle. This is how it looks from the front. We can use the tip of our pliers to flatten the U shaped pin like this. Then we can turn to the back. What we need to do now is to fold the end of the pin down as they are in a straight light next to each other. We need to push them a little bit sideways in opposite directions in order to be able to fold them flat to the spoon. Like this, I'm pushing one of the ends down onto the back of the scoop. Now it's the other end. This is how it looks up to this stage. By squeezing the pin, I'm making the bond tighter. I'm not too worried that the ends of the pins are sticking out too much. We will cut the excess length of later. Regarding how much we need to cut, as far as there is enough length left to hold both the scoop and the handle. That's fine. Here I'm using a marker to show how much I'm going to cut. Make sure the tip of the snipper does not touch the scoop. Otherwise it could scratch the surface, squeeze it one more time to make the end of the pin as close to the spoon as possible. In this, you have learned how to use the pin to bond both the scoop and the handle together. It looks very nice, but it's not finished. In the next class, we are going to permanently bond the scoop and the handle together by soldering the pin onto the spoon. 11. Making it Permanent: Our spoon is held tight together with a tiny pin at this point, but the pin can become loose with the wear and tear of daily use. In this lesson, we're going to make the bond permanent by soldering the pin onto the spoon. Before beginning, we need to have a small cup of water ready. I will show you later what this is for. Here I brush some flux paste onto the joint. We need to make sure the paste touches all the gaps between the pin and the surface of the spoon on both sides. Why? Flux helps our soda flow. As we want the solder to fill up all the gaps between the pin and the spoon, we need the help of flux to guide the soda. Too much flux won't hurt. This is easy. Soda, We need two pieces, each about seven MM long, one for each side. Putting soda into place. Heat is the tip. After the place is covered with flux, we heat up the spoon to dry the flux. Before putting the soda onto the spoon, we dip the soda into the flux dish. If we put the soda onto the spoon when the flux on the spoon is still wet, this is what will happen. The soda will fly away as the flux drive. Once the flux on the spoon is dry, we put one solder on the gap between the pin. Soda flows towards heat because the spoon is much bigger than the handle and the joint. It's right next to the scoop, focusing on heating up the joint. And the scoop, it's enough to direct the soda to melt into the joint. Once it melt, we turn to the other side and repeat. On this side, we put the soda rind next to the pin. You can see I'm holding the torch, my left hand, and the soldering pick with the other. If the solder doesn't go as I want, I will use the soldering pick to guide where I want the solder to go. Like this, I may not need the soldering pick, but if I do, it would happen in just a second. Having a soldering pick ready to go will always come in handy In this case, you can see the soldering pick is really helpful. At this point. The spoon is boiling hot. We quickly pick up the spoon using a pair of tweezers and dip it into the glass of water we prepare earlier. Repeat this for the handle. This will harden our spoon. This is how our spoon looks. Now in this lesson, you have learned how to burn the handle and the scoop permanently by soldering the pin onto the spoon. In the next lesson, we're going to clean up this spoon. 12. Cleaning the Spoon: This is what our spoon looks like. The pin has been soldered onto the spoon permanently. Gaps between the pin and the spoon are all nicely filled up with soda. However, the end of the pin is a bit sharp, is the end of the handle. Also, this entire spoon is covered with fire stain. In this lesson, we're going to sort all this out and give it a shiny finish In the end. When cleaning the spoon or any jewelry, the principle is to start from some B media and gradually move on to something smoother. I'm using a number hand file. First we file the end of the handle flat like this. Then we file of the sharp corner on the edges by moving the file at a 45 degree angle. Make sure to keep rotating the handle in this process, touch the end of the handle with our fingers if it's touch smooth job done, this is how it looks, close up. Next we're going to file the end of the pin smooth. Keep testing it with our fingers. I noticed that the little handle on the scoop has some sharp edges and we need to make them smoother. However, we don't want to touch the edge on the scoop. Let's have a closer look at the cut number zero. Hand file teeth are covered on three sides but one side is blank. This will be quite handy when filing the edges on the little scoop handle as we can face the blank side towards the scoop. In this way, we won't accidentally file the scoop by chance. Do this on both sides of the scoop handle to make sure it's touched smooth. When doing this, if we face the blank sides towards us, we won't accidentally file the skin of our fingers. If you have long nails, this will prevent it from filing off the edges of your nails. The bottom of the scoop is still a bit rough. It's not too bad on the inside of the scoop. So I'm going to use a cut number four hand file to take off some of the rough surface on it like this. Next, I move onto a nylon buffing ball to clean both surfaces of the scoop. The scoop is done, but now I notice there is a rough surface on the handle next to the joint. I use a crossing needle file to take off these marks. This one is cut number two. It's pretty nice. Now, before giving it a shiny finish, let's remove all the fire stained on the scoop by merging it in warm pickle. I talk about this pickle mixture in my coffee spoon making classes, so I won't repeat it all again here. Leave our spoon in the warm pickle for 30 minutes and rinse it thoroughly in tap water. Here's the final stage. We put it in the barrel tumbler to let the staining steel beats give our spoon a shiny finish. Our spoon will also get hardened in this process. Simply get the spoon out after 45 minutes y rinse it again in tap water. This is our beautiful, shiny seasoning spoon. In this lesson, we have learned the principle of finishing a handmade object. In this case, we started with a flat file, then move on to a nylon buffing ball, and finally, finish it with the tumbler by using shiny stainy seal. Coming up next. Final thoughts. 13. Final Thoughts: Thanks for finishing all the lessons in this class. Through the project of making a simple seasoning spoon in solid sterling silver, you have learned how to drill holes free hand. How to match two sets of holes. How to use flat files to clean edges in an efficient way. How to burn two pieces of silver permanently by using a simple pin. All my personal tips and tricks you have learned in this class will serve as the foundation for many more advanced projects to come. If I have to sum up the one most important takeaway from this class, it is to be patient for each simple step. Once you have more experience, your speed will pick up as time goes. If you have made your own seasoning spoon, I would love to see your process pictures and finished spoon posted in the project section. If you want to see mine, please follow me on Instagram or my Youtube channel on which I post brief steps of complicated making processes for my personal jury making and silversmithing tips and tricks. You can only find them here on skill share. I'm making more classes like this to share more in depth personal thoughts based on my over two decades of firsthand experience. I will see you in the next class.