So, I finally finished my round stone ring. After the solder seam on the bezel cracked on Friday, I made another bezel. This was tricky because it had to be the exact same thickness and size as the previous bezel, since I had already attached the back plate, for the bezel, to the ring. So, I made the new bezel and luckily didn't cut it too short or file it too much. Now the whole thing is soldered. I spent a lot of the day making the bezel and attaching it, and then doing the usual file, sand, and polish. If you are wondering why this is necessary it is because when you work with silver it gets very scratched and marred. From pliers and other tools there are often little makings that need to be cleaned up. To do this you file the silver down so that the mark isn't there anymore. After this you have to go through four grits of sand paper, ranging from coarse to fine, and gradually make the surface smoother. Then you move onto polishing, which is the last form of buffer. The polishing is my favorite part because when you are working on a ring it tends to look very beat up and marred. When you are done with the buffer process it takes away all the ugly spots and gives you a beautiful ring.


The ring below is a ring made of Precious Metal Clay (PMC). Working with this material is just like working with clay except that it dries out much quicker and it is infused with silver. All one has to do is shape the clay how they want it, fire it, and there you have a silver ring. When it is fired all of the clay compound fires out and all you are left with is silver. The problem with PMC is that it does not have a nice polished finish like normal silver does. So, since I have the resources, I have been polishing and refining my PMC rings to have the polished finish that regular silver rings do.

YAY! I made a ring with a stone set in it! The turquoise ring is all done. It is bezeled, soldered, filed, sanded, burnished, and polished. The circular stone ring is another story. I was 98.5% done with the whole thing and the solder seam cracked. The solder seam is where you join two ends together. With a band you cut a straight piece of wire and bend the ends around until they meet, and that is where you solder. As you already know, the two ends that meet have to be completely flush, so that when you hold it up to the light nothing shows through the crack. So, I had everything soldered together. The band was complete, the bezel was complete, and they were soldered together. I had filed, sanded, burnished, and polished. I set the stone in the perfectly measured bezel and it fit wonderfully. However, when I was tapping the edges of the bezel around the stone the solder seam of the bezel cracked, and now I have to completely start the bezel over. I have to draw out more wire and flatten it, then bend it and shape it until it is a perfect fit. Then I have to solder it together and then solder that to the back piece that is already on the ring. Then, if my solder is strong enough I will be able to finish the ring. But, oh well... I finished one ring and I am proud of it. I also worked on a ring I had made this summer. I finished soldering it together and polished it up to a mirror shine. So I made it through the day without breaking down from frustration, but my hands are another story. Blistered, cut, and bruised, they look like jewelers hands. :)

I worked on two different rings today. One is a faceted round stone and the other is an oval shaped turquoise. The round stone ring is all soldered together. The bezel for the stone, the back on the bezel, and the band for the ring are all soldered together. It took me about three times to get it right because of small imperfections that can screw up the whole piece. For those of you that have never soldered, which I am assuming is all of you, the seams that you solder together have to be completely flush. It sounds like a simple task but it takes hours! While making my band for the ring I accidentally cut the band too short and had to change how the it attached to the bezel. This tacked on another hour and a half to my ring. Anyway, after lots of help from Arturo and Julio, I was able to solder the ring together. Now all I have left to do is file it, polish it, set the stone in it, and tap the metal around the stone so it stays.
The other ring, the oval turquoise ring, is not quite as far. I have all of the pieces assembled and the bezel for the stone fits, which is not an easy task. I made sure to cut the band for this one the right length. So, tomorrow I will solder the whole thing together and go through the same process as the other ring. Hopefully I finish tomorrow and you will get to see the finished pieces! Oh and Arturo felt bad for me so he hooked me up with my own torch and soldering board so that I wouldn't have to keep asking Lara to use hers.

Today I got to start on setting my stone for my first ring. I took a turquoise bead that I had and had one of the jewelers (Arturo) teach me how to grind it down so that it was a cabochon. So I ground my bead down until it was half the thickness it had initially been. Then I took some of the silver in my box and melted it down to make a bezel wire. The bezel making process takes about two hours to do because it is to tedious. You have to work the glob of silver into a wire by forcing it through an electric mill. Then after about three runs through the mill you have to anil the wire so that it is still maleable. Silver gets very hard from bending and shaping so you have to make it soft so that it won't crack when you work with it. So getting the wire down to the width and length that I needed took me about two hours but it got done. Then I had to fit the wire around the turquoise cab and solder it (without the stone in it of course). So, now I have my bezel, and tomorrow I will solder my bezel onto a back and solder that onto a half round band. Then I will set my stone in the bezel and bend the edges around it to hold the stone in. Then VOILA we have ourselves a ring, of course after I file, sand, burnish, and polish it (all of which takes about half a day). Who knew that making jewelry took so long?!

Unfortunately, yesterday, I came down with the 24 hour flu so I didn't get to come into the shop. However, I made up for it today. Lara and I made a rustic hammered bracelet with bezeled garnets on it. In normal people terms, we made a hammered bracelet with ruby red stones on it. So, I learned how to make a bezel for a stone. Tomorrow I get to start on my own rings and earrings. I am sooo excited to start my own designs. The shop at Barry Peterson's is unbelievable. It has so many cool tools that buffer, grind, sand, bend, and heat. I have never seen so many different kinds of tools in my life. So, tomorrow I get to start my own creations using these amazing tools, and I get to take my jewelry making to a whole new level!

My first week of jewelry making went over smoothly. I've been helping my mentor, Laura, make suns for the store. My soldering skills were a little out of whack but they've come back thankfully. Next week I am going to start making my own rings and setting stones in rings. Unfortunately, I am not going to be able to cast my own rings because the process takes a lot longer than I thought it would. Depending on how quickly I work we will see how things turn out. Otherwise everything is going smoothly and I am refreshing old skills and learning new ones every day.

For my senior project I am interning with Barry Peterson for three weeks. I have worked with jewelry for a very long time. I started making jewelry in 6th grade and progressed from a plastic bead stringer to a fine jeweler that solders silver. I want to further my knowledge and learn how to cast silver and set jewels. The other component to my senior project will be photography. I have always been interested in photography but I have never really had the time to pursue this passion. I will make my jewelry and then photograph it on people. I will learn about how skin tones and eyes play into photographing jewelry.