Wednesday, May 5, 2010

Jewelry Making - Start to Finish

This post title may be a bit misleading...I really love reading tutorials and how to's by other artists - jewelry, of course, but especially from other crafts that I don't understand. It fascinates me to see others in their element creating their art. I've tried a few times showing some process photos. I often forget to take photos during several steps.. :( Kind of ruins it...but, I just get so in to what I'm doing my little brain can only handle so much. Anyway, I still want to show some process photos of the rings I worked on last week...

Once my bezels are made, it's time to solder the bezel on to a backplate...

Once the bezels are successfully soldered on and the pieces pickled, I saw away the excess metal and then file, sand and polish the setting until no seams show. Then it's time to solder the ring on to the setting (oops, forgot to photograph that part).

Once the piece is all together, pickled and cleaned...it's off to the tumbler.


Tumbling the rings cleans them so beautifully and also hardens the metal. I love tumbling.


Next, it's time to set the stones. I use a bezel pusher and a curved burnisher to set the stones. I position my ring in a vice that is lined with a chamoise to protect the metal and push and burnish away! I finished with a quick polish and...

Voila! Rings!






2 comments:

  1. I love to see other metalsmith's work processes...thanks for sharing.

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  2. i do too!! it's so fun to see how other's work! plus, i usually learn a thing or two...or 10!

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