The Art of Keum Boo - Layered Gold Flower Earrings

1. The Art of Keum Boo - Layered Gold Flower Earrings: Hello, my name is John tingly. I'm a jewelry designer and tutor from the south coast UK. And welcome to the layered gold flower Aaron's class. This class is part of the art of Colombo. Colombo is a magical technique, is thousands of years old, and it uses 24 carat gold and silver in it's final state. Bonds, two metals together in a strong permanent finish. That is simply beautiful. Each of the Colombo classes, I like to teach you something different. Maybe a different way of applying the gold ways of using the small pieces of leftover gold foil from other projects. Or in this case, how to add a dark livers. So for patina to your work, which really makes the gold pop, it's a popular book because it shows off the gold beautifully because the liver is sofa or whatever patina solution that you use does not affect the gold. And I've assigned to this project to specifically teach you how to carry out this technique. I've also designed these earrings to illustrate just how sick and malleable Colombo gold is and what a straw, permanent finish it is on top silver. However, that does mean that for this project you need to make certain that you are using really nice, good-quality gold foil specifically designed for combo, so that you do have that malleability in the metal. You also need to make sure that when you are applying the gold, that you don't leave any gaps between the pieces because obviously if they are there after you have applied the patina, they will show up as dark spots. The layered gold flower earrings start off as two pairs of simple silver round disks. I'm going to show you how to shape them into beautiful, more organic looking, layered flower designs that are perfect, not only for earrings, but also for pendants, or maybe fancy Cufflinks as well. So if you're ready to get started, let's have a look at the equipment and the materials that you're going to need to make the earrings. 2. Layered Gold Flower Earrings - Materials: These are the materials that we're going to need to make the earrings. I just look at that gorgeous, shiny 24 carat gold. 24 carat gold foils I'm using is lovely and sick as you can see how she picked it up and shake it about and it stays in one piece. It's a really good quality one from Japan. And it is definitely worth getting a good quality gold foil and not a cheaper, thinner gold foil for this project. Because you're going to need the sickness of it when you hammer the disks into their flowery shapes because the metal is going to be moving about. That. Although I'm showing you a nice new piece of foil here, I'm actually going to be using some of the scraps from this little box, some of the leftover pieces. So I've been accumulating from other projects because I want to give you another project, another idea of using up these leftover pieces because they always do accumulate and we definitely don't want them to go to waste. The disk is going to be cut out of naught 0.7 millimeter thick, sterling silver sheets, slightly thicker than I would usually use for earrings, especially double layer pair of earrings. But again, the hammering that we're going to be doing to the disk is moved to the metal, spread to the metal. So you want to start with something a little bit thicker than you might normally used for small pair of earrings. And lastly, the nought 0.8 millimeter wire is going to be used for making the air wires. 3. Layered Gold Flower Earrings - equipment: It's time to show you the equipment that we need to make the combo earrings. And as always, it does seem like a fair bit of equipment to make a pair of earrings, but do remember that everything is I'm showing you has multiple uses, can be used for many, many other projects as well. The earrings started out as a silver, so the first thing I'm going to use is the disk, so that you can see here my lovely good quality, but rather reason up now, Pepe disk cutter and I use that on a leather cushion to help support my work and keep the noise down. And I use this old hammer to hitch the punches through the silver. I'm also going to use the same hammer to shape the disks. I'm going to use the steel domain block and metal punches shape the disks first of all into cups, and then from there the edges out into the lovely unique petal shape. I've got two different sizes of flat file. Both of these are cut to that, so a good medium grade of file. And I'm going to be using them to prepare the earrings before their soldiers and also to finish off the airwaves. I'm going to cut the ear wise to links using the wildcatters. The rule that will help me to make sure that I've got the amount of why this I need the flat nose pliers, the nylon, your pliers, and also the steps, mandrel. All tools that are going to be used to help me shape the ear wires. The punishing hammer and the bench block are also going to be used to help me with the ear wise. I do my pendant drill. I've got a rubber wheels sometimes sold as a silicon wheel. It is rubber with silica embedded in it. And I'm going to use that to smooth the edges of the petals before I sold them together. But alternatively, you can use find sanding pads instead. Of course, as this is a combo class, we're also going to need some equipment to help attach the gold to the silver. If you've watched my other Colombo classes, your nose that I prefer to use my lovely little ultralight to kill, to heat up the golden silver to get them to bond together. But you can use a hot plate, just a simple electrical cooking hot plates instead. And if you haven't looked at the golden butterfly pendant class, then that class runs through the advantages and disadvantages of each method. The other pieces of equipment that you can see here are a couple of pairs of tweezers to help hold the metals steel as I'm working on it to support it. A little wooden stick, it's a half of a coffee stirrer. This May 1 seem quite as simple piece of equipment, but it is very, very useful for checking that everything has got to the right temperature. I use a burnisher to burnish the gold down onto the silver. I prefer to use an aggregate burnisher, but it's still one that does the job just as well. I often use just a little bit of water. That's what's in this little tab here. And I use that to help me transfer the gold onto the silver steel bench block is not essential. But if you put your finished work on the steel, it will cool down a little bit quicker. So a piece of equipment that can help with safety. And lastly here I've got a rounded file. I use that to help trim off excess pieces of gold from around the edge of the silver. Towards the end of the class, I'm going to be giving the earrings are lovely, rich, dark patina. We're going to be using a patina solution to do that. She can also use livers, sofas. It comes in various different forms. I prefer the slightly less smelly version. And they touchy tupperware tub that you can see here is a central piece of kit. It's going to be using for mixing up the solution. Something for stirring the solutions like the old plastic fork that you can see here is very useful. And I always work on a couple of paper towels just in case there any strategies. You use Renaissance wax to protect the patina and I'll be applying that to with a soft white lint free cloth. 4. Layered Golf Flower Earrings - soldering equipment: This is a soldiering project. So of course, we also need to have a quick look at the soldiering equipment that we're going to need. As you can see, the whole of my soldiering table is covered with fireproof surface. I've used soldiering sheets to cover the table. And then I use the smallest soldiering bricks are solving blocks to actually carry out the soldiering on top of is useful to have some extra soldiering blocks because then you can build a little killed around your work. Useful if you're socially larger pieces and you need to hold the heat in. You can also see here a softer soldiering brick that you want lots of holes in it just because I push pins in to hold things in place sometimes. And a charcoal block that is very useful for melting of small pieces of silver on top of or for helping to support your work. Here's opinions, as I mentioned, and also a few copper coins. They're useful for helping to support your work sometimes. So make sure that it's nice and stable and ready for sold rings. It's not going to slip about. I have two forms of silver soldier. I've got the traditional soldier strips are solid soda. I've got three strips of soda. Each is of a different melting temperature. What hard, medium and easy. Hard is the highest melting temperature followed by medium. And then easy, ease the lowest melting temperature. I use the red handled snips that you can see here to cut the soldier into smaller Pauline's and to keep those in the labeled boxes you can see here. I've also got soda in a more modern form, in a paste. It is ground-up, solid soldier essentially that is then being mixed with a flux and also a bit of a binder to turn it into paste. It's a more expensive way of buying soda, but it can be very useful for fiddly little jobs. Flux is essential for getting the patterns of soldier to flow out as they melt. To float across your soul to join, see what a nice, strong soul to join. Soda, I use two different blow torches. The silver bowed one is slightly beaker with a bigger flame and therefore a hotter flame than the smaller one. So what I'm doing smaller jobs such as earrings, I'll use the smaller blow torch. Bangles though need the bigger blow torch that's useful having a couple of different sizes. Both of these blow torches are filled from butane gas canisters. I use a paintbrush to apply the flux where I want it to be. The red handled tool is a soldier pick that's very useful for moving soda into place. And I've got two pairs of reverse section tweezers. One straight nose, One bent nose, reverse action because you pushed them to open them. Very useful for supporting your work and your sofa and moving hot work about. The black Sharpie is very useful for when you are annealing or softening your work, something you'll see me doing quite a bit. After soldiering, you always need to call your work down. That's what this quench pot is for the pipe, the Pyrex bowl with water in it. When soldering sterling silver, copper oxides form on the surface, those needs to be cleaned off before you can continue with any other work. So once the silver has been quenched to cool it down, then gets put into pick-up spot, which is a so cooker that you can see here, contains a mild acid solution that works fastest to clean a silver when it is warm. So you can heat it up in several different ways. As you can see, I've got a slow cooker. Other people prefer to use baby bottle warmers, coffee mug warmers, or even food warmers that have a T like candle underneath. The pickled does work when it's completely cold, but it works fastest when it's warm. The additional pair of tweezers are very important because you never put steel into the pickle. Once you get your work in and out of the pickle with brass or plastic tweezers. And you may also find it useful to have a plastic sieve. So you can sit small pieces of work in a surf, put the whole sieve into the pickle to save you having to fish about on the bottom of the picker to get small earrings and pendants back out again. Last, but by no means least is a pair of safety goggles. You've only got one pair of eyes, so you need to look after them. 5. Layered Gold Flower Earrings - cutting the discs: The first stage or making the earrings is to cut out two pairs of disks. I'm going to need one larger and one smaller disk for each earring. And I want them to nest nicely inside each other. I'm going to be using my faithful old discard it. So I've now said in classes before, it may look quite beaten up now, but it's still cut beautifully because it's such a good quality. One is a puppy tools one. I've also got a dust and version. I love them both. But I tend to gravitate to this one is it's the ones I've had the longest. I've decided I'm going to use these two cutters. So they are 7.9 millimeters and 11.1 millimeters. And you can see from the sizes there that they look like they're going to nest nicely. I know from experience I going to nest nicely inside each other. Now one important point to remember is that because we're going to change the shape of the disk. So there's a little bit, they're going to become a little bit bigger than this. So if you're wanting nice dainty earrings, do bear that in mind. That you might want to go for slightly smaller cutters to make smaller earrings because they're going to turn out a little bit bigger than the size of this punch here. So I've got my discusses sitting on top of that a cushion just to keep the noise down. Inflammation to support the tool is just way I like to work. And I've also got an old hammer. Remember that if you are going to be hitting tools rather than silver, you want to use a nice hammer, like old hammer with a good weight to it, rather than using one of the nice texturing hammers. Because why you can see some of the marks that the tools of left on the surface of this hammer. You wouldn't want to damage your texturing hammer and for those marks be transferred onto your silver. So I've got my piece of 0.7 millimeter sheet here. For earrings of this size, certainly earrings that have a double layer of silver. I would usually gravitate to slightly thinner silver. I'd maybe, maybe as much as 0.5. But remember the reason why I'm going to be using the 0.7 instead is because I'm going to flare the shape out. I'm going to hammer the edges of the disks to change the shape, to lose that regular round make more and more organic looking. And having a thicker piece of sheet means that I've got more metal to move than if I was using 0.5. So I'm going to get better results from using the 0.7 instead of nought 0.5 millimeter. So I'm going to keep the plastic coating on there just to give up here some more protection. And they go for that whole first. One of the reasons that this is a really good discounter is as it can capture really close to the edges, I can make the best use of the sheet as possible. So my preference is to, and you can see that anyway, you can see, I'm hoping that I like to make sure that I can just see the edges of the silver and then push them, push the piece of silver further underneath. The edges are just out of view. And that way I know that I'm making the best use of the piece of sheet as possible. Another way that's a good quality is at the top sandwiches, the silver and then I see it fits tightly against the silver. So silver is not going to shift about. Some cheaper versions have a gap between the two halves, so silver can move about a bit. They spit my simple one disk across these earrings. Remember, I need to do the same for the second one. So again, take the time to set it up so that you're making good use of the sheet. Although I have to say that if you misjudged it ever so slightly, and that way you can actually see how close I got to the edges there. So make good use of the sheet. But if I misjudge just slightly and not put all the sheets underneath, so I hadn't cut out if I hadn't cut out a perfect circle. If I've left a laser off the edge, then it actually would have been okay for this project. Because remember, we are hammering the edges, flaring the edges out instead as well. So that would solve that problem. Just double check, I've got the right hole. Again. Number two. Hey, So that's fine. Materials. Sausage feet sharing. As you can see, this fits nicely inside each other, necessarily nicely inside each other. But of course, some of the ones I want to apply the gold foil to, the next job is going to be raising up fine silver surface, or we call it raising a fine silver surface. It's actually taking the copper content out to the surface to leave fine silver behind. That process depletion gilding to prepare the silver so that gold can bond firmly onto it. So that's the next thing that we're going to do. 6. Layered Gold Flower Earrings - depletion gilding: Now I'm not gonna make you watch every single step of doing this process because it's not the quickest process and it is very repetitive. If you want to see it in more detail, then have a look at the golden butterflies pendant class, which is the first class in this series of combo lessons. And that goes into a, goes into it and a lot more detail. But essentially what I'm going to do is heat, quench, rinse, and dry my little silver desks, and then repeat that process about eight or nine times and then probably once more for good luck. The reasons I'm going to do that is, of course, as you will have seen, a dark discoloration appears. And that dark deceleration is the copper oxides formed by combining the copper present on the surface are present all the way through this, the piece of sterling silver, but it's the copper at the surface that reacts with the heat and oxygen in your flame to form copper oxides. And of course, we clean off those copper oxides by putting our work in pickle sequentially it first, you never put anything hot directly in the pickle. But I hope that you will have noticed that every time you reheat a piece of silver up, less and less copper oxides are formed. And that is the whole premise that depletion gilding is based on. Every time you heat up the silver, less than a socialization is formed because there's less copper left present at the surface of your sterling silver. So more of it is held in the pick-up spot. And we want to get to a stage where there is no discernible copper left at the surface at all. At that stage, we know that we've been left with a surface cities as fine silver as possible. And that is the surface at suitable for combo. Of course, you could save yourself a bit of time by using fine silver straight away. Or you need to do then is just make sure the metal is clean. But I always like to show people how to use sterling silver because if you're just starting out with Colombo, you're more likely to have a little bit of sterling silver around in the workshop, then you are fine silver. And I know, as I've said before in previous classes, if I teach you how to do this on sterling silver, you will also know how to do it on find silver. You just have to miss this particular step out. I've drawn a black sharpie mark on each disk and that's to help me make sure that I don't heat up the silver to fall as we get through to later stages of heating it, there's going to be less than S oxidization formed as we just discussed. And so it's a little bit too easy then just to heat up the silver too far, just to see if he can get rid of ostracization. But if you do that, you actually risk of damaging the silver as she's starting to melt the surface of the silver. So it's far better to draw a black sharpie mark. My black sharpie, um, so that, you know, kind of heat it up until it's just maybe a ghost of that mark remaining. And that's enough. So it's far better to take this process a bit at a time and go through those repetitive eight or nine times. Rather than try and blast your way through it just in three or four, you will get much better results, believe me. So the heat these up one at a time. You have taken the plastic coating that was on there before. When done? That one. So I'm going to quench these, pickles them and then show you what they look like afterwards. I've just taken the disks out of the pick-up spot and it gives them a rinse and dry pushing up black sharpie mark on there. And I'm going to heat them up for the second time. And this times this, I should be able to see that there's less oxygen than there was before. So much lighter than they were before. But there is still, some are still quite a bit of copper oxidation is still on the surface. So I'm going to, as you probably guessed, quench, pickle, rinse, dry and do them all again. I'm going to go through several more times. And then what I'm looking for is on the last stage is that they stay the lovely paper white color. That silver is the unpolished appearances silver when it comes out at the Pickle. So I'm going to go through the process a few more times and come back to you when they are about ready. So these little disks just over seven millimeters in diameter have now been heated and gone through the process eight times. I bought the camera in closer so that you can hopefully get a better look at what they are, what their appearances now. So always see they look nice and clean up. Nice paper white car because they've just come out of the pickles. They'd been rinsed and they've been dried for the Sharpie mark back on them. But this time, what I want you to look for is the fact that there should be no discernible color change from when the flame is directly on the silver from where I take the flame off. Um, you should have noticed. I hope that when you've been soldiering, that's the patch of silver that the flame is directed on. Doesn't have ostracization just temporarily while the flame is on it. As soon as the plane goes away, the oxidization appears to buy this stage with these two desks because they've been heated up so many times because the copper has been taken out of the surface as much as I can. There should be no difference to when the flame is on and when the flame is off. And that is the stage at which you know, your silver is ready. So let's give it a go. Mark is on there. Remember to make sure I don't know. Nice paper, white color underneath the flame. No difference when I take the flame way. Try that again with the second one. Sharp is disappearing. Lives paper white, Colorado, least displaying, take it away. And again, there's no color change. So those two disks are now ready. I'm not going to crunch and pickles. And now, because not only have I double-checked that they are ready that the depletion gilding has a big process has been completed, but they are now nice and clean. The heat from the flame has cleaned them, so I'm just going to let them cool down. I'm then going to take them back over to my workbench where I have sets the ultralight kiln up. Because the next stage is to put the gold foil on. 7. Layered Gold Flower Earrings - applying the gold: The ultralight killed has been heating up and you can see the red glow underneath. There has been heating up quite nicely. I've got the silver desks sitting on the top heating up, getting ready for the Chromebook process. So just going to go through with you what I've got here. A reminder. I'm, rather than using a fresh piece of gold foil, I'm making use of some of these leftover bits, some other projects because the shaping and hammering that's going to be carried out and the disk is going to a smooth out any texture that occurs, I'm overlapping pieces of gold foil. So it doesn't really matter that I've got overlapped two pieces. So this is another great project for using up little bits and pieces. And I have, I put that out of the way already, got some little pieces out. You can see them on the steel block here. And I've cut them and also pulled them with my fingers just into smaller pieces. I made sure that my fingers were cleaned first, wash and dry first so that I didn't leave. Can finger oil residue on the gold. Because remember, we want to make sure that both the gold and the silver art as clean as possible. I've got like a burnisher. So I'm going to use to apply the pressure because remember it's the combination of the heat and the pressure that causes the gold and silver in their purest form to bond together. If you want a far more detailed explanation of why that happens, then again, refer to the golden batch flight attendant costs. Because that goes into those details. A lot. Yeah, a lot more detail. But for the moment, you just need to know that it needs the two metals in their pure state and they need to be clean. So they are a pot of water. I'm going to do just by dipping the end in there. I can then the surface tension of the water allows me to easily pick up a piece of gold foil. Pair of tweezers, says I could hold the silver still. And also very important. So I'm going to use now just to test that we've watched the right temperature is a wooden stick. This is a, was a coffee stirrer and it's been shortened and shortens cutoff the a broken off the chart ends secret a fresh piece. But when you apply this to the silver, if there's a little bit charring on the end, then that is a sign that everything is the right temperature, which it is. So I got to get going. So I'm going to do, as I play, this, is make sure that the gold, that's just a sizzling of the water. And make sure that the gold is overlapping the disk a little bit. Suddenly introduction, it is important to make sure that you don't have any gaps in the golden coating on the silver discs in this project. Because if you do, pick up the next piece, if you do, then, um, the liver, so for patina will really make, um, we make those silver gaps a lot more obvious. So I'm making sure that not only am I overlapping the pieces of gold, relaxed those two pieces. The time, also making sure that the goals is going off the edge. I'm going to start using smaller pieces. And some of the pieces I prepared are definitely a lot smaller. If I can actually pick them up. There we go, so that I can fill in the smaller gaps. Now, these first two pieces were bigger, covered most of the disk. Get the last couple of gaps. Last one batch do. Try to keep my hand from going from this direction because obviously that's where the, uh, the heat, the heat is coming out. So it's making sure going round the edge and making sure that that serve, that piece of silver is all covered. Now what I'm going to do is just pick that off. That's off the top of the kill and put it on top of the Go on top of the steel block. I don't want the piece to sit on here for overly long after it's finished because then the gold will start, um, start looking less price. It's actually starts to thinking further about it takes a long time to happen, but it can happen. But it starts to bond warm more and then starts to look less bright. So I went to avoid that by moving it onto the steel block. It just cools down quickly. The steel takes the heat away from the metal. So though putting it on steel is not part of the Colombo process, it's not an essential part of the process. It's a good safety thing to do because it makes sure that you are cooling it down quickly so you're not leaving hot things sitting on your desk unnecessarily. Same as width. First one, making sure they're overlapping. And making sure that I'm going over the edge as well. Just one more piece. Whoops. So Jay-Z, every pass to pick up. Again, that piece has done. Popped in steel block. I'm going to unplug kill now and put that over in a safe place on the bench. And those are the two disks. So I'm going to do now is show you how to trim those pieces. So we've got the excess gold around the outside. These are now cool, if you remember, they cool down quickly because they're sitting on the steel block. And I've now got that round needle file I showed you before, which I'm interested in is the curved surface. So I'm going to use that part of the file to help me trim the excess gold from around the edge of that desk. Always hold over the GoTap hot scrap, threefold karat gold, but always hosted over there. So I don't lose any little bits. And we're still going to do is tell you the fans about 45 degree angle to the edge of the desk and just file around the edge. And you can see that just cuts through the foil. I find it a rounded file. Lot better for this than a flat one. So there's one disk where he tied it up. See it tastes much of seconds. And do the same. One. Last alphabet. Okay? Right? The next stage, let's make sure that that gold is put away safely. But the next stage is then shaping both the silver discs that are going to go at the back of the earrings and the gold disks that are going to sit on top of them. 8. Layered Gold Flower Earrings - shaping the discs: Light then time to dome and to shape the disks to turn them from flat circles into beautiful Fred with more flowery organic shapes that we're going to layer together. So I've got the domain block out. I've got a same Hamlet's I used with the, ah, the, the discussion. Got that. I've also got my metal punches that came with the domain block. Now, usually when I don't shapes, I tend to have a texture on them. So I use the wooden punches inside of the metal ones because I don't want the silver other texture silver sandwiched between two pieces of metal because that was hammer the texture out. But in this case, there's no texture. And I actually want the strength of the metal because that's what's going to help me to flare the silver out and to hammer it out into that more organic shape. So put the, um, while the launcher disks into a suitable dish. He tries saying that too quickly, disk and dish. I take the other three out of the way and I'm going to do first of all, it's just doughnut. Not going to worry about making the edges any different. I'm just going to donate. So I've got a domain punch that fits nicely in here. It's a good size. It's a little bit bigger than the silver dish, but importantly the edges, it will not come into contact so that the head of the domain blocked domain punch itself will not come into contact with the edge of the dishes. So I've just got the disk licensed essentially in the bottom of this dish. And I've got the punch nice and upright. I'm just going to do a couple of taps to maybe a couple more as well. Just make sure again, this is centered. And that's the disc shaped. I started to be domed, but it's still an obvious circle. I'm going to do the same thing, those punches all over the place. I'm going to do the same with the other one. Again, making sure it's nice and central. Keep the punch size and central and upright as well. Again, couple of taps. Going to go back and do the first one's a bit more. I don't think I had that quite centered. So it's not such a nice curve to the bottom of the disc As on the second one. So that's better. So are there moments I said they are domes, but there's no shaping around the outside, the front so that the outside edge of the disk. So that's what I'm going to do now. I'm going to put it back in the same hole in the domain block. But this time I'm going to use a smaller punch, selection of punches here. You can see this is the one that I used to do the domain. Like what's the smaller ones here? What we want to do now is swap to a smaller domain punch. So instead of working our way across most or all of the surface area of the dish. The going to choose the smaller punch. So we focused just on a smaller part of the dish. And how about in fret and shape that? So now I've chosen the punch. The next thing to tell you is that whereas before I had the disk in the middle at the bottom of the dish and I had the punch nice and upright. This time. I'm going to have the disc sitting at more of an angle like so. So I'm going to push it up towards one side. And I'm going to hold the punch at more of an angle like this. So suppose it's more like 60 degrees. So I tend to do one punch like that, another punch a little bit more upright, so I go one, true most of the time. So what that does is it hammers on the outside of the Dish instead. So if I try and hold, it's like so it's hammering, trying to get it without my fingers. Hiding it. Difficult because it's small. I'm hammering on that edge instead of in the middle. And that's what's going to flare that edge out. Now, it's quite difficult. Actually, nine impossible, as I said in the introduction, to get the two looking exactly the same, but we can get them to a close as possible, the same sides. And by using the same punches to do the two, they are going to look a pair rather than look completely mismatched, but they're not going to be exactly the same. So it's holding it at an angle this time. By doing a couple. I can start to show you the difference between the two. I move this out of the way and put them on my fingers. So move them about. This one, the one that I've been hammering, the one that's just come out of the dish. You can certainly see at the top end here, you can see some areas where that's been hammered and flared out. And again round here as well. Whereas this one's still looks nice and fresh and clean and even around the outside. So I'm going to continue with that a little bit more. So you can see what it's going to look like. One thing to note is that because you are hammering on the edge of the dish, this domed, every now and again, the silver might flip out and come out of the dish. So it's worth bearing as it might be, worth being aware that your silver may go flying across the room and just watch out for it. Definitely more flowing out there. I'm going to do a little bit more. Thing about this is that you can go back and do more. Obviously, the more work you do to this, the more work hard and the silver is going to be. So you're going to get to a point. Do you feel you're not? Whoops, there we go. This is not going to be having much of an impact, but that's, that's a nice shape. Now you can certainly see now the difference between the two. So next job is to I make that one look more like that one. Same again. Back into the dish. Sent to some more around that edge. There. I can get it to sit nicely in phi. One goes as well. Just popping the first one back in as well. Bit more work on that. So I'm happy with those two. I need to do the same now with gold ones so that they fit nicely inside. And I want to put the gold ones in a dish and the domain block so that it's not the same curvature. I want them to sit a little bit proud. I want them more curved so that they don't sit flat up against this desk. So I'm going to go for this one and reach initially that she the punches I've just been using a good size to get the curve started. Obviously making sure that as I'm hammering, the gold is the go-to site is up what the golden side, the dish. Not on the outside. So I'm just going to check. Yes. So I've got a nice small punch smaller than one that I just used. And you do exactly the same to these gold disks as I did to silver ones. I do find smaller the dish. The more likely it is to go flying my trunk you to be aware of that? I think that one shaped enough, which is a good job because it keeps wanting to fly away. So those are the gold ones as well. You can see they sit inside the silver ones nicely and definitely no longer look like a nice even circles. The next thing I need to do is get the Psalter together. 9. Layered Gold Flower Earrings - preparing for soldering: There are two things that I want to do to these disks before I sold them together in their pairs. One is to soda, a slightly flat area on the back of these two goals and ones the ones that are going to go inside. The reason for that is that these have got a slightly tighter curvature than those disks. So if I left them how they were, only be a tiny bit touching the bottom of these to the inside of the bigger ones. And what I prefer is obviously a slightly wider so do join between the two so it's a stronger so to join by filing a slightly flatter area, I'm going to have a little bit more in contact between the bottom of the golden disks and the inside of the bottom of the silver ones. The second thing is I want to do that so it changes sizes to do once I started feeling the edges of these. I just want to soften the edges a little bit. I'm just going to tighten them up just slightly so everything feels a little bit more comfortable. I'm going to use an attachment to my pendant drill to do that. And I'll show you that in a moment. I'll discuss with you a couple of different alternatives that you could use instead. But I've got my six-inch file setup here, the handle, I'm hanging off the edge of the table, so sitting nice and flat. So we're file these first and we're going to do is just use finger and thumb just to hold them evenly and draw them down towards a handle. Remember, sill, we've got to move towards the handle. Doesn't matter whether you move the file with you move silver. But that's where they need to move from relation to each other. That's the way to files a cut. And I move about in the light should be assessed slight difference now how the lightest catching it. Slightly flat area has been started back in focus. And that's that one done. That's all it takes. The same to. The second one. A bit more. Go. I suddenly you actually see with those flatter bottoms, they sit more, stay with me there. So they're going to be a better, um, as I said, a wider and therefore stronger, so to join between the two. But now I want to clean up around the edges with a camera a little bit so you can see what I'm doing there. So for this job, I'm going to use my rubber wheel embedded with circa in their belief. So it's slightly abrasive, but it leaves a really lovely finish. So I'm going to use statistics a little bit. They feel a little bit where fled them out, they feel just a little bit sharp. So I'm just going to soften them ever so slightly. I'm not going to change this shape. I'm just going to make sure that they feel a little bit more comfortable. You could instead use something like a fine sanding pad just to rough around the edges, just to make them feel a little bit softer. Again, making certain, especially on the gold ones that you don't start to push the sanding pad on top of the Golden top of the desk that you're just acting on the edges or maybe a little bit on the back. So I'm going to use pendant journals, I said because that's what I prefer. And also let's face it, it's a little bit quicker. Definitely feels nice. Round the back. Now it goes one to definitely do have to make sure that you don't go on. Go on there. A bit more fiddly to do. One. Very likely that the wheel is going with the rubber wheel. And the amount of pressure that I'm pushing on the silver is such specific. Rub my finger deliberately, my fingers, I'm going to tickle, you know, it would build up. But just to show you how political pressure on using, while, it might not be quite so easy. Keep a good hold on it to make sure. As always, safety goggles when you're using the pandemic joules so that if something accidentally does fly well towards you rather than across the room and you'll keep it nice and safe. So those are just right. Next job. Solving them together. 10. Layered Gold Flower Earrings - soldering the flowers: Light then time to sold at these dishes together to start making them into the earrings. I've swapped. So the gold dishes back and forth a little bit to have a look at them inside the different silver dishes. And I decided I prefer them this way round. And I've also set them on the soldiering block in the orientation that I want them to be. So by that I mean this one, for example, it looks as if it's got a singular voltage here and here, and on the gold dish, there's a bit one more with a bulge on this side. So decided they didn't want those sitting right next to each other. I wanted them to be spaced out, I suppose, around the design and on here. I suppose, but frilly bits here and on this side of the gold disk. And again, I didn't want them right next to each other. So decided to put them almost opposite each other. So as I'm trying to say, is don't just plunk the gold dishes inside the silver ones. Have a look at them, decide if there is a particular way round that you think that they look best and go for that. Now, I'm going to be using mediums, soda paste to put these together. And I'm using paste rather than a separate Parthians and flux because I can put it exactly where I want it to be. So I'm going to squeeze out a little bit of the paste on the back of each earrings. One there, one there, and then flip them over and pop them in, making sure that I remembered which way round I want them to go. Make sure that one sitting nice and centrally and same for this one to flip it over again. I can just pop it in there. I'm just going to use the soda pictures to make sure again, sitting nicely. Just have another look at them. Yeah, I'm happy again with the way that the golds dishes are sitting inside the silver ones. I'm happy with the way round that they aren't. Just move that second one, say further apart so that I can soda one earring and then the other. And the second hearing isn't too close to the first isn't going to get heated up unnecessarily. When I'm solving the first one. I'm just going to briefly discuss a couple of very important things to bear in mind when you're soldiering jewelry like this that has already got the gold attached to it. She's in Colombo method because of course, the combo temperature, the temperature at which the Gold starts to bond to the silver is lower than soldiering temperature. So if I were to keep the flame on either of these two long, if I were to heat them up for too long, length or time than the gold was start bonding to the Silver more and more. And although it was still be there, it would lose its beautiful bright yellow appearance. I don't want that to happen. So if you are going to do a project like this that soldiers after the goals has been applied, please do make sure that you are using good-quality gold foil. This, as I showed you again in the introduction, is a nice thick foil. It could be picked up a wave to pouch without breaking into pieces that can be cut with scissors, with paper punches torn into pieces. But it's nice and thick and it's also 24 carat. You can get cheaper versions to thinner and more tight, closer to 23 characters. If you're going to soda with a cheaper version, you're going to start losing that bright, bright yellow. I really would recommend getting a good quality combo foil if you're going to solve it afterwards, especially at, in this case, we're going between two soda joins, one to put the two halves of the units together. And of course, the second to put the airway. So I'm going to sold her earring. And then the other the other thing to bear in mind is no matter how well do you think you've burnished the gold down there are always going to be teeny tiny air pockets where it wasn't completely banished down. And as everything heats up, the air in those unvarnished sections is going to expand slightly. So you're going to get a few little bubbles starting to appear on that gold foil. But don't worry, they can be dealt with very easily by just burnishing the gold back down again after you've finished the soldiering. And indeed I use as a bit of quality control, just making sure that everything is really nicely balanced together. Some heat, the gate burns, shutter hands. And so do this 1 first. What I'm going to look out for is maybe it's a bit of a reddish tinge to the silver. And also should be able to see that which is settling down of the gold because at the moment it's sitting a little bit proud because the soldier underneath I'm I'm I just want I just wanted to see it settling down from it. What I don't want is for it to tip to one side or the other, which can happen when you saw him two domes together. So I'm going to keep my soda pick handy so I can if necessary, just adjust it a little bit. I'm also going to make sure that I heat more around the earring and focus my torch more underneath the silver, rather than keeping on top of the gold. Just protecting that gold is a bit better. So here we go. Heating up around. Remember when you're using pace, there might be a smoke with a bit of a greenish plane that's just the binder burning up. And it's absolutely normal. My son cube of a slope. Always see the green flame, but you're going to shift down a little bit. There's also a nice reddish tinge, the silver. And said things I can see is there is a little bit of bubbling up at that gold foil. So I'm going to take all of those signs that the two has sold it nicely together. And actually now as I start to move the gold, She's not shifting at all. Because when you are soldiering two things together like this, of course it's difficult to see the flow of the soldier, so you have to go by other signs. Instead. I've gone by the reddish color of the silver. Like on by the fact that some oxidization has appeared on that sterling silver, larger sterling silver dish that of course hasn't had any depletion gilding carried out. I've gone by the fact that was a little bit sinking down of the gold dish. You can settle down a little bit as a soda float. I know. So there are a few bubbles popped up as well as I'm just burnishing down now. So that is now ready to go in the quench pot. And then you can pick up pop to clean up whilst I do a ring number two, again and got my soda pick handy just in case I need to adjust the position of that goal dish out more underneath focusing more on the larger because silver flame. I don't really see that fame that hey, that time. Little bits of movements go. Dish. Oxidization, bit of a reddish tinge. I don't really, you can see them as well. Bubbles. And again, note now this time, that hasn't actually soldiered. You see, that's still moving in Tibet. Fine. That just means I stopped a little bit too soon. Better redness and again, the go-to settled down a bit better. Now, which I moved the gold, the silver moves with it. So that's burnish that back down. There weren't very many air bubbles and they are teeny tiny. Still best to burnish them down. Okay. So again, that second hearing is ready now to go in which the pick-up spot to get cleaned up. And whilst it's in there, I'm going to show you how I prepare the airways. 11. Layered Gold Flower Earrings - preparing the earwires: So the main part of the hearings are now cleaning up in the pickle after soldiering. I'm always it is remaining is to sort of the gear wise in place and finish those off, but it still is rubbish. Preparation on year wise first, this is nought 0.82 millimeter, saying silver round. Why? It's the one that I prefer to use for my ear wise. I find, as you might've heard me say in other earrings, glasses, I do have a few of them. It's a nice thickness that's comfortable to go through your ears, but it also holds its strength nicely as well. So for drop earrings like this, depending on how much of a drop I want to my ear lobe and the main part of the earring. I tend to make some plots. I tend to cut the lengths of wire between 4.56 centimeters. I find anything above six centimeters, just gets a little bit too flexible. It's a bit too wobbly. So I'm going to go for, um, these are quite big earring design really compared to some of the other ones I make. So I think I will go for a full six centimeters. One, going to use my fingers to pull the wire nice and straight. And then use the first one was a guide for cutting. The second, I probably will have to trim them a little bit after their soldiers in place. Because I find that even if they start off exactly the same links, you might sold them slightly differently and it might be a kind of a millimeter or so out saying, Well, me trimming afterwards. But before I sold them in place, I do want to just hammer the ends that are going to be sold it onto the earrings first, going to create a paddle shape, I suppose flared out flattened bit on the end of each year. Why? And that is what's going to be sold on the back of the earring. I do this for two reasons. It looks a little bit neater than just having a stick of why soldiers onto the back of the earring. And it also creates a stronger soldier join because you've got a larger area of silver once this has flattened out, sewed onto the back of the E-ring. So slightly wider. Soldier join makes for a stronger sold join. So I've got the benchmark still won't plot here on another cushion just because it helps keep the noise down. And this is the hammer. As I prefer to use this splashing hammer. Nottingham has come in different shapes and sizes, but fantasies rounded here. That's what's makes his splashing hammer. Um, and I just use that section to her mother hair, the outside of the ridge. All I'm going to do outside of the dome rather, we're going to do is just hammer the very end. And you can see in the light moved about and have the one Hammond and one unhampered next to each other. See that that's slightly flared out are slightly flattened so it is same to the other May 1 notice actually this, I hammer them the same number of times to try and get them as even shaping as I possibly can. The next thing I need to do is just use a needle file to very lightly just a hammer. The edges of the areas suggest platens and turn that over and do the other side. Maybe a little bit fussy, but it just helps to neaten those wires out. So those are now ready to soldier in place. And by now, the earrings should be cleaned up in the pickle. So let's get on with putting everything together. 12. Layered Gold Flower Earrings - soldering the earwires: Right then everything's cleaned up nicely. So it's time to soldier the year wise onto the hearings and getting finished. So I find with designs like this, when they are, I'm not a kind of geometric shape, not a uniform shape. And notice differences in the more precise the way that they'd been created. But I do find with sinusitis that there seems to be a right or wrong way up. So it is worth having a look at your designs, turning them around different way. I mean, for example, that way does not seem right. Um, there's, uh, the way they're sitting, so less silver on that side than that side. And the same with this one actually has said on that side, that side. So I've had a play about with them. I've looked at them different ways around and I decided which way up they should be. And then put a mark, Sharpie mark on the back of each earring to tell me that is the way up, that is where the ear y is going to be sorted into place. So I need to get soldiering. I'm going to move each one over here. Because I like to hold the ear wires from the side. Just gives me finally this cross a little bit more. It just gives me so much to rest my hand on the edge there and I'm able to easily access where I need to solve it. I find it more comfortable here and trying to have the earring over here and hold it like so. You're comfortable and competent than the way that you're holding everything in your soldiering. It's up to you, but I prefer them over here. Going to use soda paste. I've used that before when he's easy soda paste to solder, the wires in place. And I've also got the eye gate burnisher handy again, so that I can just burnish down the gold again if need be. So going to squeeze it a little bit of easy soldier onto the underneath of a EY and just going to melt that a little bit. Binder burning off. We go so it's no longer. Hopefully you can see, especially if I hold the other one without dropping it. In comparison. Hopefully you can see there's now it looks fatter at the end there, but he's no longer pace, it's solid. And I like to do that. So it's part melt it in place first so that I don't accidentally smear, paste across the back of this and make a mess. So practice what I'm going to put it and then move my hand out in the way because I'm going to put the most heat initially into the earring. Whether the earring is a small piece of silver, relatively speaking, this EY is even smaller. So I like to put a little bit of heat into this first and then bring the ear wind down. Gentle sharpie marker, you see it burning off the airway down, a bit more heating. Now, hopefully, you saw a little bit of a flash of liquid Silver around the perimeter of that ear. Why? That was a soldier melting and flowing out. When that happened, I then took the heat away but held this hand still because if I'd moved everything when that was looking still bright, the CO2 pieces could have still have come apart. I had to wait until it went to I went to a matte finish, I went to side again and then it's all safe to move. As before, hardly at I had three or maybe four air bubbles there, but it's always worth going round. And burnishing again, can pay very careful attention to the edges. And then nach needs to go in the quench pot and pickup cleanup plus I to the second one. And of course, the good thing about doing earrings to C2. You get to see it twice. This time. If you didn't see the liquid flash of silver, that's soda melting flowing out. Trying to have an account for this time. Again, easy soda paste. This melting it so it's no longer paste. Solid shape. I'm happy with how everything is positioned. Heat into the air, bring it down, carry on getting soda mountains going out. To hold my hand still. When it goes dull. That means I can lift everything up. This is all. Now become one piece. Couple more. Air bubbles on this one. Here we go. Crunch this one problem both in the pico to clean up. And then the very last thing is to shape and finish those airways. 13. Layered Gold Flower Earrings - finishing the earwires: Nearly finished, just nice shape the year wise now. So soldiered in place and all cleaned up. And you can see the back definitely does look not neater when it's not a I'm not it's just the stick. Why sold on to the back, but when it's flattened out, just looks a lot neater as well as being a stronger so to join. So just kinda make sure that these are definitely nice and smooth and straight. You can either use your fingers for doing this or as I'm doing, use a pair of nylon your clients and applies a brilliant everything moves the matter without leaving marks on them. And the next thing I'm going to do is just double-check that these airways are still the same lengths. And actually to my eye, this one on the left is just a millimeter longer, not operate this way. I don't think anyone would actually noticed. I've finished the earrings, but I'd know. So I'm just going to trim that off and then use the needle file just to round off the ends of the wires just so they feel comfy. So there are filing in the same direction. You see I'm actually turning hearing round. So I'm not just filing the same part of the why. Honest. I am making sure that it's nice. I see rounded. Always use your fingertips rather than your eyes to check that it's nice and smooth, your fingertips are far more sensitive to. Number two. Okay, that's done. I'm just going to double check that these are still nice and straight and smooth, but I haven't been to the wire tool either being filing. So the next thing I want to do is actually bend the y's round. And she can use anything that is round and a suitable size to do this. Pen barrel and knitting needle. I've got this steps mandrel here that I'm going to use and I like to use the middle section there should work out roughly where I want the Bend to be and start to bend that round. Have a check. Yeah. I definitely don't want that to be shorter. Not going to use that part, that font section, the wire the longer, want to put it back on and bend this bit round into the U-shape. Because if I bent by, pushed that bit around the mandrel, it would make the earring shorter. I definitely didn't want it to be shorter. That's looking nice. Now the trick is to try and get that one matching. So going to start bending little bit higher up. So I think the bench should really be. And yes, we are to see there definitely is a little bit higher up. So this section here is currently too long. So when I put it back on the mandrel, just kinda push this front section around the mandrel just a little bit. Maybe hearing a little bit shorter. Still, little bit long compared to the first one. But it's always best to do this a little bit at a time. I'll just shorten that section again, pull that random angle. It's always best to do a little bit at a time and get it right. That's looking good. I'm happy with that. If I had accidentally made this bit too short, then I've got two options. I can either make this one shorter to match, which I don't want to do, or you can just use an island your pliers again just to pull it straight and have another go. Well, that's taking goods. So as with the first steering, I'm happy with that. I'm just going to use back here, put that round to use the top in the U-shaped. There we go. Two things left to do. One that uses the hammer, and one that uses flat nose pliers can do the hammer first. And what I'm going to do is just prolactin the front part of the U-shape. I like to do that to get some extra strengths to this U-shape here. I prefer not to hammer the whole of it, just the front part because I don't like to have a pass this section that goes through my ear. Again, just using the outer part of the face, the hammer, not the middle section. I find that gets the best results with his hammer from holding the earring design off the bench block so that that isn't damaged. Just catches the light should see that that is a little bit flattened. Again with that one. Then with the flat nose pliers just kind of flick out the end of the wire. Um, and what that does is skip a little bit more of a finished look to the whole earring, but also I put the shooting the widths that applies there. Pull it out slightly with the ear. Why now shaped height is for the EOI to come out of my ear. It would actually have to change direction because of the bend in the y. So it actually keeps the earring a little bit more secure than you do the same. It's the second one. Going to use the widths that applies is my gauge. That means that they're both going to end up with the same because I just spent the widths of the prize. Franklin, some always close to where you're working to keep control over the wire. Just quick, quick twist backwards. Now the last thing I'm going to do with these is to give them a antique patina, a darker patina, and show you just how much that makes the gold pop out. 14. Layered Gold Flower Earrings - adding the patina: Time to show you the effect that patina or liver, sofa or liver so for substitutes in the case of the one that I've got here, the effect that, that has on gold. And when you see the effect that will show you why using an aversive patina is so popular with Colombo jewelry. So I've got some hot water, prey fresh off the boil. I've got the personnel, the, um, the patina solution. I don't use the traditional liberal sulfur, um, because that is very smelly and shared building. I don't notice the smell that much anymore, but apparently it's his really smelly. So I use a substitute. I find that this bottle last me a little bit longer. Um, I've also got top of cold water. So once the protein has been put on here, I'm happy with the look of it. I can then rinse off in the cold water and that will stop the patina developing even further. Or plastic forks like a fish it out easily and I'd like to protect the surface with a couple of paper towels. I never pull the patina directly into here. I always put a little bit into the loop first and then pour it in from the lead. That prevents me from accidentally being too heavy handed with a solution. And I'm just going to give that a bit of a mix-up so you can see the color, amber color that's created. This one. You can pop those in. I just pop them in for a moment. You can see patina also already starting to develop, but not developing on a gold. So let's put them back in again. Doesn't take very long for this to develop a tool. Even though I'm using fairly dilute solution, I much prefer to be very hot water. I'm quite sure dilute solution, I get best results from that. I find so happy with that. I'm happy with that one. Fish them out and give you a closer look. You can see how beautiful and dark silver has gone. But gold is still bright and beautiful. So that gorgeous. So I'm going to get those are dry. And I'm also going to very quickly show you something called a Renaissance wax and how that can be used to protect the patina to prolong his life. And here is the Renaissance Wax. It is a very, very fine to say, a microcrystalline wax Polish actually been developed, um, with the, the British Museum for use in, um, agreed on their use with a restoration specialists restoring a beautiful art objects. And to make sure that a little bit more protected, what a lot more protected from the elements. And you don't need very much at all. I've had this for quite awhile and it's going to last me. I'm quite a few here, Here's longer as well. So you want to use it with a soft, clean cloths and don't need to use very much. All I'm going to do is just gently wipe on the back. I don't know whether seeing the light there. I've just taught 1.5 and it's kind of enhance, I think the furnish little bit. The other side as well. Let's wiping the excess off. It dries almost instantly. And it's nine impossible. I found leave fingerprints on this, which is great. So difficult to do right in the crevices of that petal. But I've done it as much as I can, but I'm certainly protected the areas was going to be handled the most. I have not put any of the wax on the ear. I prefer not to. I've not heard of anyone having an allergic reaction to the ingredients that are in here. But I still prefer superfan not to, not to risk it. So I'm just putting it on the main section. I think earrings on the back there. And in that cocktail in random rim as well. So that's all it is to it. Very quick and easy to use. Beautiful pair of dramatic earrings. 15. Layered Gold Flower Earrings - final thoughts: So there we are, one beautiful dramatic hair of gold and silver earrings. We've covered quite a few different techniques in this class that you can transfer over to other designs. Adding the liver. So for patina to any combo design really does make the goal to pop out. So you might want to revisit some of the other classes in the outer Colombo course and see how liver sulfur can really change the look of those signs. Then of course, there's the shaping of flaring out of the disks into those beautiful petal shapes. You can use that says simply on silver discs as well. And create designs that are just as beautiful. And of course, as you can see here, these flowers aren't just lovely as drop earrings. We've got a pair of study rings here as well. These were made with two pairs of smaller disk shaped in exactly the same way as the jockey earrings with a combo carried out in exactly the same way, but this time with a starch fittings salted onto the back. And of course here's a pendant to finish off the set. Dependent started out as a slightly larger power of disks and a veil has been sold it onto the back with a chain of threading through it. You could even go a step further and add an extra layer of petals if you wanted to for something even more special. No matter how you use the techniques shown in this class, I would love to see what you make. So please do share your designs. But for now, thank you for watching.