More Bangles!

Lots of hammering and polished took place in the studio today! Some of the bangles I showed you this morning will have cups of gold or lovebirds attached to them as orders come in, so they've been left as they were for the moment, but the square wire bangles were hammered with my favourite hammer today. I estimate that each centimetre around the bangle gets about 10 hammer strokes, so considering that the bangles are hammered on the three outside faces of the wire each bangle has approximately 700 hammer strokes - give or take!

However, I've got an extra special bangle to show you now. Rebecca came for a day's tuition at the beginning of July, but the main piece that she wanted to make was for a present for her fiancé which meant that I had to keep it under wraps for a while! They got married a couple of weeks ago and are now, I hope, having a wonderful time on their honeymoon so I can now show off what Rebecca made!

Rebecca asked the jeweller who made their wedding rings to use the remaining gold (which came from a piece of family jewellery) to make a little "kiss", and came to me to make a sleek bangle to solder the kiss onto. She hadn't made any jewellery before, and worked really hard to give the bangle a beautiful finish. Often it's the pieces of jewellery that look the most simple that need the most attention. If you give your jewellery a texture you can sometimes use that texture to cover small surface imperfections or scratches - with a smooth sleek surface there's nowhere to hide!

Of course, Rebecca couldn't show her fiancé the bangle until their wedding day and knew he would ask to see what she made, so the last hour or so of the day was spent making herself the pendant and earrings below. Again, the gold in the middle of the pendant was left over from the wedding rings. I can honestly say that out of the many many pieces of jewellery my students have made over the years, Rebecca's pendant is one of my all time favourites. It started out as a simple disc of silver, but hammering has given it such a beautful shape and texture, and as liver of sulphur doesn't affect gold the patina really works wonderfully. I love it!

Bangles!

Lots of bangles waiting for more hammering and polishing!

 Just taking a quick break from hammering to show you one of the jobs on my list for today - lots of bangles! I think I may have mentioned once or twice before that bangles are one of my favourite pieces of jewellery to make - the one of the most visited posts on my blog is one with photos of all the steps I go through to change a length of wire into a beautiful, go-with-everything piece of jewellery.

My Maker's Mark and the traditional hallmarks

I made these bangles last week and they've just come back from hallmarking up in London. You might notice a black mark on a couple of the bangles. This is where the Assay Office put the hallmark. I like to mark where I like the hallmark to be, so a quick pen or pencil line marks the spot. Hallmarking is another of my favourite things - I'm fascinated by the history of hallmarking and proud to continue the 700 year old tradition, and of course I've got a blog post about that too!

My first group workshop of the Autumn teaches how to make a bangle. At £65 plus the cost of the material (usually £10-15) I will teach you everything you need to know about making bangles - and of course you will go home with your own beautifully made bangle as well! On NOTHS sterling silver bangles cost £75 or more - so for the cost of buying a bangle you will go home with a bangle made perfectly to fit you and all the skills you need to make more at home. A bargain when you think about it!

The Bangles workshop is on Friday 13th September, and booking is easy through the website here.

A day of stone setting

Today was the day - my first student in my new studio at the Sorting Office! Julie worked really hard learning a new stone setting technique - and as she set five tiny (3mm) faceted stones in a beautiful bangle I think it's safe to say that she learnt it well!

Soldering the discs onto the bangle - a delicate piece of soldering!

Julie didn't just set the stones. We had square wire to start with for the bangle but she decided that slightly rectangular wire would work better, so the first job was to send the wire through the rolling mill to flatten it. This had the added bonus of lengthening the wire too so she ended up with enough to make a matching ring - a project for a later date! Next was making the bangle, soldering five discs onto the outside to form frames for the stones, cutting the seats for the stones - and then setting them! An amazing amount of work for one day, even if Julie is one of my advanced students from my college evening classes.

I've still got to set up my photo studio so these were quick shots taken in the beautiful natural light in my studio.

Julie set the stones using flush setting. The seat for the stone is cut into the metal sheet or wire using burrs in a pendant drill so that the top of the stone is flush with the top of the silver. After the stone is pushed into place a burnisher is used to push some of wall around the seat down onto the stone to hold it in place. I think she did a beautiful job! There are five stones around the bangle - amethyst, aquamarine, quite a pink garnet, citrine and peridot.

New Workshop date!

I have at last organised a workshop date! It's been a while, but I really wanted to get something organised before the school summer holidays and I've had a request for more beginners workshops.


This is the perfect workshop for learning your first silversmithing skills or for refreshing your knowledge - and of course you go home with a beautiful piece of jewellery made precisely to fit you!

The aim of this workshop is to teach you how to make a bangle from sterling silver wire. A range of diameters and shapes of wire will be available for you to choose from, and the first £10 worth of materials are  included in the cost of the workshop. Depending on the cost of silver on the day this usually covers the cost of an average sized bangle. All equipment is provided.

While learning how to make your bangle you will learn the following skills:
calculating the amount of materials required
sawing, filing, sanding and polishing
hammering textures
soldering
We will also cover topics such as hallmarking, and you will be given information sheets to help you to make your own bangles at home. These are the basic silversmithing skills required for creating virtually every other piece of silver jewellery from chains to earrings.

This is the only group workshop that I will be running before the autumn, and there are only 5 places available. For more details and to book a place follow the link - link!

That was quick!! There is now only one place left - if you'd like it, you'd better get in there quick!!

All of the places have been booked now, thank you!

Thank you!

Thank you for all the lovely comments you have been leaving me recently - it's always nice to know that there are real people behind the numbers in the stat counter! I'm glad that people found the bangles post interesting. I have to admit that I didn't actually write it with the intention of writing a tutorial. Daft really, as teaching and writing projects and tutorials are part of how I make a living! It was more of a "here's me making my favourite piece of jewellery" post, but I guess that a tutorial is what it turned into! With that in mind, I've added a bit of info to it, namely how to work out how much silver you need for your bangle.

And there's another piece of information I need to give too - Qiotre, you asked how long it takes to make a bangle. To be honest that's a bit difficult to ask as I tend to work in a bit of a 'conveyor belt' method as it’s a more efficient use of my time – I tend to cut the wire for half a dozen or so bangles at one time and then file them all at the same time, solder them all at the same time etc. I can tell you that most silversmithing students I teach, even the complete beginners, complete a bangle easily in a 3 hour session, and that on a good day I can complete about half a dozen simple bangles in a day, fewer than that if they are more complicated bangles like my silver birch ones.

I've got a bit of blog catching up to do. I've got bits of info to give you, new designs to show you and so on - so expect a few posts over the next day or so. I've let them pile up while spring fever has had me sorting old cupboards for the charity shop and painting the hallway! The first thing I need to do, though, is say another thank you, this time to Vicky as she gave me a blog award last month. So, thank you Vicky, and I'm sorry it's taken me this long to post about it!

The award is the Lemonade Award, and it's awarded for "a positive attitude towards others and their blogs" which I'm chuffed about. It's probably given because I read so many blogs - take a look at the list of blogs I follow on my profile page! As always, there are rules attached to the award, and they are:
1.Put the logo on your blog or post
2.Nominate at least 10 blogs that show great Gratitude and/or Attitude.
3.Let them know they have received this award by leaving a comment on their blog.
4.Nominate your favorites and link to your post

I've nominated people whose blogs I enjoy reading and find an inspiration, either because they craft beautiful items or have a wonderful attitude to life, or both! And they are:
Nicky - Sparkly Treasures
Laura - Beads by Laura

Kyoko – Cotton and Cloud

Alice – Raspberry

Laura – Bugs and Fishes

Anne – Contrariwise

Lisa – U-handbag

Monda-loves

Lu – Blu-shed

Kirsty – That Crafty Fish

Right, I'd better go and let them know they've been nominated!

I like bangles!

Bangles are definitely my favourite things to make at the moment - there is so satisfying turning a piece of silver wire into a tactile, shiny, wearable-with-anything piece of jewellery! I've been making quite a few recently, some as commissions, some because the wire in question was begging to be made into the perfect bangle, so I thought I'd show you some of the processes!

The starting point is obviously calculating a piece of wire. I use the circumference of the bangle I need and the diameter of the wire I'm using to work out how much I need, and then get my saw out. The old saying "measure twice, cut once" is doubly true when it comes to sterling silver!

I use a set of bangle sizers to help me work out the inside circumference of the bangle I want to make, but another way is to use a ruler to measure the inside diameter of a bangle you know fits you and then calculate the circumference (circumference = diameter x pi, pi being that number that never ends, 3.142 for these purposes). Whichever method you use to work out the inside circumference of your bangle, you still need to add on a little bit of wire to take account of the thickness of the wire. I add on 1.5 times the diameter of the wire. So, if I'm making a bangle of inside circumference 220mm out of 2mm thick wire, I need 220mm + (1.5 x 2mm) = 223mm of wire. Don't worry, that's the only maths you'll see on this blog for a long long time!


The next job is to file the ends of the wire square to prepare for soldering - the join will only be neat if the ends of the wire meet up properly. Once I've checked the ends with my set square it's time to bend the wire into a rough 'D' shape. This makes sure that the ends of the wire are flush with each other.

Next - apply the solder and flux. I like to use solder paste for soldering bangles, especially if I'm working on several at the same time - it's got the flux (the solution that makes the solder flow across the join) already mixed in. You don't want to use too much solder, though, otherwise you'll only have to file the excess off afterwards.

It's time for the flame next! I use the bigger of my two blow torches for jobs like this as it's quicker at heating up such a big piece of silver. In order for the solder to melt and flow across the join the whole piece of silver has to be heated up. I place the solder on the inside of the join and heat from the outside. The heat draws the solder through the join, so I know that if I can see solder all along the join on the outside of the bangle, the join is secure.

Once the soldering is done, I quench the nearly-bangle in water and then put it in pickle (a mild acidic solution) to get rid of the oxidisation that heating up the silver causes. I like the 'fizz' the silver makes as I quench it! My pickle is kept in a pyrex dish in water in a lidded slow cooker to keep it safe and also keep it warm. The warmer pickle is, the quicker it works.

Then comes my favourite bit - shaping the metal using my mandrel and hammer. I love turning the strangely shaped loop of metal into a smooth bangle, and I love the fact that the hammer I use to do it is one that I've inherited and it's older than me.

After shaping it's filing and sanding. These are definitely not the most fun jobs, but they are absolutely necessary in order to get a professional finish. The aim is to make certain that you can't see where the soldered join is, and the only way to do that is to file carefully and then to work your way through all the different grades of sand paper.

Once the bangle is sanded I usually give it a hammered texture, partly to help hide any knocks that the bangle will get during normal wear. Before texturing the bangle is annealed (heated up and then quenched, pickled and rinsed) to help soften it again as the shaping, filing and sanding will have work hardened the metal.

The final stage is polishing, usually in my tumbler, and there it is! This is one of my Dabbled bangles, made from 5mm oval wire. It's got a really nice weight to it, and oval wire is lovely to wear.


Okay, lesson over for today - I'll be back tomorrow with some more photos!

Too dependant on computers?

Well, what do you think? Have we becaome too dependant on computers? Mine has been rather poorly lately, so poorly that it had to go to hospital (aka a friend's computer-whizz husband) to have not one but four nasty bugs cleaned off it. Now, if the computer gets an 'ordinary' virus then I can usually deal with it, but this time what ever was on here was actually preventing our virus checker from working (but still making it look on the surface as if it was working) and preventing us from getting onto virus and spyware checking sites that could have helped. I really and truely cannot understand the mentality of people who create and release these programmes. How on earth can they go through life with no thought for other people? It's just completely alien! I'm not a violent person (unless you're a piece of sheet silver that needs hammering of course) but I was definitely thinking very violent thoughts when I was wasting my time trying and failing to get the computer sorted out.

Anyway, rant over! I've got it back now, so you will hopefully have seen that I've been able to finally update the front page of my website. I'm trying to de-clutter everything to make it easier for people to find the information that they need without looking at a long list of links in the menu. I've got some more work to do, and planning to get it done this weekend. Jobs for tomorrow include:

• letting you know who won February's earrings and posting a picture at last of the ones you could win in March if you sign up for the newsletter,
• uploading some more new products to the website,
• catching up on the emails I couldn't deal with while the computer was down (an iphone can only do so much)
  
• preparing some information sheets for my class tomorrow evening and
  
• sending out a new newsletter

The newsletter will include details of the next set of workshops, so if you'd like to be one of the first to know when places are available you'd better sign up!

As well working on the website, I've been taking photos today, including those shown here. The pendant at the top was uploaded to the website this afternoon. I cut the daisy from sheet silver and then textured it with the texture that I'm loving so much at the moment. The stone set in the middle is blue topaz, and I'm planning to offer the pendant with a choice of different stones.


The Silver Birch bangles shown above have been popular on the website for a few months now, but I've updated the listing to offer the choice of a shiny of an oxidised finish. Oxidising has changed the look of the bangle greatly, and I love how it has really highlighted the beautiful texture my favourite hammer has given the wire.

It's definitely my bedtime, but I will be back tomorrow with more to show you!

I'm getting there!

I've realised just how often I say that - I'm getting there! I seem to constantly be working on a project either for the house or for the business that I'm certain will make a massive difference to our lives and when it's finished I can have a short rest. But it never stops! I always find something else that I just have to do, and I am definitely too hard on myself when I feel that the list of jobs is getting too long. Take the windows that I painted the other week as an example - I just had to get them done that week, but as soon as I'd done them I was telling myself that I just had to fix the paint in the hallway where we had had a leak ages ago, that I had to replant the front garden, that I definitely needed to sort out the spare room before T's Dad visits this weekend. I realised at the weekend just how hard I was being on myself, so the front garden, the hallway, the utility room ceiling etc etc etc can wait a while longer and I'm going to do one thing at a time!

So, this week I've been sorting out the spare room. This is the room that used to be my workroom, and since moving into the shed the room has been a bit of a mess. It's got the rest of my craft stuff (mainly paper craft things that I just don't have time for any more) and also several items that appear to have been dumped in there - you know what happens when you've got a spare room - stuff just accumulates there! The plan is that this room will becomes B's, and I was rushing to get it done so that B could move in there in time for T's Dad to be able to sleep in B's old room this weekend. In the spirit of givning myself a break, though, I've decided to just paint it and tidy it so that T's Dad can sleep in there, and then B can move in there when it's done properly.

All that was a long winded explanation of why I hadn't posted yet this week - sorry! I have managed to squeeze in some jewellery making though. I've made some lovely (well, I think they're lovely!) necklaces using Mindy Macgregor's beautiful beads. Actually, I can't be the only one who thinks they're lovely as one has sold even before I've had a chance to put it on the site properly. I've also been making lots of bangles as commissions. I love making bangles! My favourite bit is when I hammer them around my bracelet mandrel after I've soldered them as they don't just look like strange silver shapes then! I've also been working on a couple of other things, so I'm going to stop now, get some sleep, and take some photos for you tomorrow.

Making my mark!

Now, my exciting parcel - on Saturday the first pieces that I sent off to Goldsmiths, the London Assay Office to be hallmarked arrived home! I applied for my own Maker's Mark in April and decided to keep it a surprise for most people until I got my first pieces back. The main person that I wanted to surprise was my Dad. He's an ex-Trading Standards officer and they're the people who enforce hallmarking and things like that in the UK, so I really just want to hand a piece to him and say "so, do you notice anything?". I think he was suitably impressed! I know that in theory anyone can apply for their own maker's mark, but in my mind having one makes me a 'proper' silversmith.

Anyway, this means that I can now start selling my pieces of jewellery with more than 7.78g of silver, as anything over this weight legally has to be hallmarked. This is why I haven't added things like my silver bangles to the website yet - they will be added very shortly! And if you'd like a preview of my hallmark (although you'll need good glasses for this!) have a look at the bangles above - no, they're not scratched, that's a hallmark that you can see! My maker's mark is my initials JRT inside an oval. So, Hannah, was your guess right?!

The parcel containing all my silver and hard work was actually supposed to arrive on Friday, but thanks to the Royal Mail van breaking down after it left Goldsmiths' on the Thursday afternoon everthing was delayed and the Royal Mail had no record of my parcel exisiting until Friday morning. That made me just a little bit upset (!), so thank you to Nichola who came round and gave me a hug on Friday morning! I really needed it!

Still here!

Yes, I am still here! I meant to post as soon as I came back from the silversmithing weekend at Flux'n'Flame but to be honest I was absolutely shattered!! I LOVED the course! Not everything I tried turned out how I planned (several things ended up in my scrap pot on the second day) but I learnt alot and that was the aim of it.

So.....this is what I made. The first thing I made was a bangle using oval wire and I love it so much that I have hardly taken it off since. It's so comfortable to wear. I really enjoy making bangles and have several ideas for them so as soon as my bracelet mandrel arrives you will be seeing some on my website! The afternoon of the first day I use the rolling mill to press a leave pattern into silver sheet and practiced my piercing skills to cut out a leaf shaped pendant. I plan to hang some semi-precious stones from the top, but I haven't had time yet!

The second day, as I said, resulted in lots of experiments, but the third day was definitely more productive! I finished 3 stacker rings (for me) and a bracelet for Mum - but you'll have to wait for that as she hasn't seen it yet!

I have finally ordered a shed to turn into a workroom as I can't work in my room in the house anymore - it's right next to B's room and the only time I get to work is when he's asleep. Can't exactly hammer then!

The other reason that I've been awol is that I've been sorting my website out - and I've finally done it! Once my webhosting bloke (aka Ben from BM-media) got me so far, I could use some code I found on the zen-cart help forum to sort the rest out. Ben was a star - he even helped me out the day before his wedding! Anyway, go and check my website out and let me know what you think about the new look! And maybe by the time you're back I'll have changed the look of my blog to match.