Thursday, January 13, 2011

Jewelry Class

My attendance at the jewelry class came to an abrupt halt when, after filing silver for 3 hours, my tendonitis flared up. Well, I did get to learn some new techniques, and have a couple of rings to show for it. In class, we learned how to carve wax, which is later dipped into a plaster to form a mold. The wax is melted out and molten silver is poured in to create the item in metal. Here is my wax carving of what was to be a ginko leaf pin. My first project was a ring, which in profile looks a bit like a bird. Before the ring's final polish, the green mold was made of the ring, in case I may want another one just like it. Blue wax was poured into my green mold and this can be used for a similar ring. I have a broken gold necklace, that I thought I would melt down to make a thinner bird in gold.
As you can see, I am no hand model, but this is my second ring.

And the ginko leaf pin is in progress and will remain that way for an extended period of time, while my hands get back to normal. I still have much more filing to do on surface as well as solder on a stem.
As I left the jewelry studio, I realized the source of the musical "Jingle Bells" and "Santa Claus is Coming to Town" tunes. The local patchwork painted primary school uses phrases from these tunes to call the children in from the playground. The music always stops mid-phrase, which caused me to wonder why these songs were playing in the first place. Now I know.

1 comment:

  1. Hey-

    'Been looking for a carving wax supplier in Istanbul- found your page. Could you direct me to your source?

    Thanx much,

    Christopher

    ReplyDelete