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 !

Ring from Scrap... Part II

This morning I welded some parts together.  

The silver band is assembled and sized.  Since I don't have ring mandrel (yet), I turned my own in brass on my metal lathe.  It's good enough for now. ;-) 

I welded two silver sides to the side of the band and two brass sides to form the ends of the "stone" bezel.

There is some "filling" to do to refine the bezel, it also needs to be blended into the band.

I also need to further refine the shape of the band.  For comfort, the back of the band should be a bit narrower from the front.

Making a Ring from Scratch... or is that Scrap ?

One side benefit of making jump rings is that you always end up with some scraps of nice clean silver.

This picture shows the various stages to go through in order to create usable material from scraps.

1. Collect your scraps, don't mix metals ;-)

2. Melt them in a crucible, a MAPP gas torch works best for this and don't forget to heat up the spout of the crucible, otherwise your metal will cool off before it gets into the mold.

3. Pour the melted silver into the mold to make a shape of silver.  My mold has several sizes of rods.

4. Hammer the rod into shape.  Make sure to anneal the "blob" several times as you go, otherwise, you'll end up with unusable broken pieces.

5. From the flatten piece, trace some nice straight pieces and cut them with a shear, less material loss this way.

6. Hammer your pieces into the desired shape using a ring mandrel or some steel rod.

Ambitious Silver Chain...

After Christmas, my wife and I decided to work on a common project.  It combines jump ring making and shaping with lots of torch work.

All components are made of "fine" silver.  It is very soft and easy to shape.  But it is pretty close to "impossible" to solder.

The picture shows the various components of the chain.  My wife makes the jump rings, then their  joints fused with the torch, then she forms them. Meanwhile, I make the pieces that look like push pins.  These are short lengths of silver wire with the ends melted into a ball.

Then, the fun part begins.  Assembling the chain links together.  This is accomplished by alternatively flipping the links and connecting them with the pins... I use the torch to melt the other end of the pin into a ball, that locks the chain link in place.

We have not decided if this is going to be a bracelet or a necklace.  It will probably depend on my patience. ;-)