Something Unexpected

This is the second version of this post I have written.  The first strangely disappeared.  Remind me never to go to Blogger on my iPad again.

Last night I had a wonderful surprise from a customer.  Last week we had talked about making molds from old buttons.  I bought a few recently, which is what I made my button rings with.

So she brought me a whole tin of buttons that she had gotten from her grandmother.  I think she said that her grandmother had inherited some of them from her grandmother.   I'm  not an expert at dating old buttons, but I do know these are very cool.  The designs and textures are exquisite.  There are some metal ones, what I think is Bakelite, and some black glass ones.  I researched those last night and I learned that black glass buttons became popular after Prince Albert died in the 1860s and Queen Victoria went into mourning.  She wore jet buttons, apparently, but those were too expensive for most people, so less expensive ones were made from glass.

Lately I have been struggling with whatever the metal clay version of writer's block is.  And wondering whether I should continue making jewelry.  My wish for a while has been to make my jewelry and teaching into a full-time job, but the economy hasn't cooperated, and I have taken a job.  I really do like it, but adding it to the mix of obligations has given me very little time or energy to create.  Hence the block or lack of inspiration or whatever.

But the buttons have given me inspiration.  I have been fascinated with the Victorian and Edwardian eras for a very long time and, using the molds I have made from my own buttons as well as my those of my customer, I will begin a new line inspired by those periods.

I'm itching to start.

Six Rings - Part Two

 I had a partially successful firing of the first three rings.  A successful firing, to me, is something I don't have to do anything to after except for polishing.  Unfortunately, this wasn't quite the case.

Everything sintered just fine, so in that way it was successful.  The problem was with the shrinkage.  It seems that shrinkage in sterling clay isn't quite as simple as I thought.  In the last post, I said that the clay didn't shrink as much as the package said it would.  I would like to rephrase that.  The ring shanks don't seem to shrink 25 percent.  The settings for the stones, however, do.  The settings shrunk enough to pop out the stones on two of the rings.  One was pretty simple to fix, but the other took a bit more work.  In the end I did get both stones set.  

The second set, with the small stones was a bit easier knowing what to expect as far as the shrinkage went. 

 

All six came out of the carbon with a small bit of yellowish coating that was easy to remove with a scratch brush.  About an hour in the tumbler was enough to brighten them up.  They seem to be much stronger than the same rings in fine silver would be.  I cannot bend the bands.  

I loved making these rings.  My favorite setting is the one with just the four corners, with the channel on just two sides running a close second.  I will continue to work with sterling clay, and I want to explore the shrinkage issues a bit more.

Six Rings - Part One

A while back I made a couple of rings with square stones.  They weren't exactly alike, but similar enough that they went well together stacked.  A customer bought them and asked me to make another, similar but not the same, so she would have three to stack.  When she picked up the set, she asked if I could make three more.  She wanted a total of six, three with smaller stones, three with larger.

When I made the first three, sterling silver clay was not yet available, so they are fine silver.  I made them thick enough so they would be fairly strong, but I knew the two colors of silver wouldn't match perfectly.  The more I thought about it, the more I wanted to make all six out of the new sterling silver.  They would be stronger and all six would match in color.

I made a prototype ring.  I came out great, but didn't shrink as much as I thought it would.  But now I have a good idea of ring shrinkage on sterling, which doesn't seem to be anywhere near the 25% shrinkage rate I have read.

So accounting for the new shrinkage factor, I started making the rings.  For thin rings like this, I use a method I developed so that the ring shank is seamless (rather than cutting a strip and wrapping it around a mandrel and joining it).   I started writing a blog post about the process a long time ago, but never got around to publishing it.  I will give a step by step tutorial at some point, but right now I will just go over the highlights of making this particular set of rings.

I cut all the ring shanks out of sterling silver clay and left them on brass tubes so they would keep their shape while drying.  It also gives you something to hold onto when working with the shanks.  I usually only do a rough shape in the wet clay and do most of my work in the dry clay state.

Because I made a mistake when ordering the stones, I only had the larger stones, so I set aside three of the shanks for later and roughly set the three stones in clay.  The colors are hard to see in this picture but they are deep purple, sapphire blue and ruby red.  The stones are absolutely gorgeous.  I may have to make something for myself with the ones I have left.

I then start filing the ring shanks so they are an even thickness all the way around.  You can see in this picture that I don't cut them completely round because I want to have the top of the ring have some kind of a shape.

I put them all on the same tube so I could file them together and be sure the sizes and shapes of the shanks matched.

After I do some rough shaping of the shank, I will also roughly shape the stone setting and then attach it to the shank with slip.

In the photo below, you can see all three drying.  On a couple of them, you can see marks where I have drawn out the shape in Sharpie.

After they are dry, I fill in the gaps with clay and build up areas that might need it.  Once that is all done, I start on the refining of the shape.  On the ring below, I wanted the stone to be held on just two sides and so I carved away the clay where I wanted it to be open.  You can't see it very well in the photo because of the angle, but the opening goes under the stone and right through to the other side.  Once this ring is fired, the shrinkage will hold the stone in place securely.

I also wanted to carve a little design on the sides of each ring as something special that only the wearer can really see.  You can see that I have sketched it out in pencil and below shows my favorite tool for carving like this.  It's just an awl with a shortened shaft.  It has a nice sharp point and gives a pretty good impression.

Finally, after sanding, shaping and refining the surface on each ring, I carved a design on each.  The very last thing I do before firing is to thoroughly clean the surface of the ring so that there is no dust left on it.  Also cleaning the stone with alcohol is necessary because any dust left over from sanding will fuse to the stone during firing.

Here are the three rings ready to be fired.  Sterling clay requires a two-part firing, which I will discuss in my next post.