Cam & Follower Ring ...

I just needed to spend time in the shop this weekend, if anything, to get my mind off work. The week was rather rough... but on the good side, I survived the 16th round of layoffs since 2000.

Anyway, this ring's design reminds me of a cam and cam follower ;-)

The body is a flat band of silver.  At the top, two rectangular semi-circular wedges of silver are soldered to the sides of the band.

A cylindrical piece of brass is soldered into a notch on the top of the ring.

All the silver parts came from the scrap box, hammered into shape.

Silver Ring with Sodalite Cabochon...

Here's another attempt at recycling silver scraps.  This time things went more as planned. ;-)

I scribed the flattened piece of silver with the objective to from two long pieces for a simple band.

I cut the pieces with my jeweler's saw and then refined the shape with a file.

I bevelled an end of each piece in order to provide a very strong weld joint.

I then cleaned the pieces in silver pickle for a few minutes to ensure a strong weld.

The picture with the beautiful fire scale, is the resulting joint before it got pickled again.

I now needed to anneal the piece in order to hammer the band into shape.

I brushed on flux, to use as a visual temperature indicator.  Once the flux becomes liquid the temperature is just about right.

The flame was removed, and then the piece was quenched in water.  

The band then spent some more time into the pickle to remove the fire scale.

I placed the band material around my hand-made ring mandrel and hammered into shape.

I overalapped the band at the top where the bezel for the cabochon will be welded.  (black traces

 on the band).

The excess material passed the bezel will be bent upwards to form a clutch for the bezel to be welded to.

In this picture you see the clutches have been formed by bending the excess material and filed down to a nice shape.

The bezel fits between these two clutches and rests on the double band.

At this stage the doubled band and bezel were welded together, but the cabochon was not set.

Here the rings has gone through a cycle of cleaning, the stone (sodalite) is not yet set.

When I get a chance, the ring will go through the next level of cleaning, I will set the stone and apply some wax and give it a final polish.

Just in Time ...

This weekend my wife and I decided that the "fancy" chain was going to be a bracelet.

No... it's not that I ran out of patience... the thing got quite heavy.  Making a necklace out of this type of chain would be some heavy !

We made a clasp and large jump ring of sterling silver, and soldered it to the ends of the bracelet.

It just needs a bit of cleaning and some jeweler's wax to complete it.

It was a lot of fun to make together, we're already thinking about a next joint project !

Casting Silver Scraps...

Well we finished another project this week.  So it's time to collect the scraps of silver from around the shop and cast some silver rods.

I use a ceramic crucible that I previously treated with flux to form a nice coat of glass on the surface.  I use a MAPP gas torch as it produces more heat and enough BUTs to melt the silver.

Once the silver has melted and forms a nice silver sphere in the crucible, it is ready to pour into the mold.  I need to keep the flame just in front of the silver as I tilt slowly the crucible to pour. 

This ensures that the spout of the crucible is warm and does not cool-off the silver before it enter the mold.  You want to pour the silver quickly but smoothly into the mold.  This prevents trapping air into the pour and make an even density cast.

I let things cool down for a few minutes, then I opened the mold and there it is a nice rod of silver. 

Ring from Scrap... Part III

Well things don't always turn out the way you want them...

Remember a while back I said not to mix your metals... well this also means to not mix fine silver with sterling... because the overall melt point lowers and you end up with a melt-down.  That's what happened when I tried to fill the gaps that I had in the bezel.

So... not wanting to give up, I changed the design of the ring and it became a band.  I replaced the bezel with a piece of thick brass.   Once all the welding and cleaning was over, I gave the band a treatment with the ball pein hammer.  So the surface now has nice little dimples in it.

I'll see if I can get a better picture of the effect, it really adds to the band. 

Regardless, this was a really great learning experience, and really fun to make...from scarp silver, to bi-metal band !