I learned how to use the rolling mill in class earlier this month, where you can put a texture on the metal. I made cut outs with paper for the texture. Above is my first test, super fun! It’s cool that I can combine my drawing with jewelry! The top of pic is the piece of paper I cut out. The project today was texturing the metal with the rolling mill (you put the texture material over the metal and roll it through these heavy metal mills) and then setting a stone between two pieces of metal by riveting.

I’m taking the class at Veberod Gem Gallery. The teacher there, Tai Salisbury, is awesome! She’s super supportive and a great teacher. I’m so glad I found them, it was really hard to find a place for jewelry metalsmithing classes.

Unfortunately, brass is a harder metal, so a lot goes into using it with the rolling mill. The teacher, Tai, said I have to first heat it with the torch till it’s glowing red, then submerge it in water right away to freeze the molecules, then put it in a pickling solution to clean it up (its all covered in black from heating up). The copper in brass comes to the surface from the heat so you have to sand it back down to get to the brass. So its more work than other metals but I love brass!

I know, the stone doesn’t really seem like it belongs there, but that was what we were learning, how to set a stone between two plates of metal with rivets (the four circular hammered bits). The teacher said I didn’t have to put the stone but I wanted to learn the skill.Riveting is a way of connecting metal together without using heat, just metal wire going through the holes of the two metal plates and then being hammered to keep it in place.

I really enjoyed making this! I also drilled 5 holes (and this time it didn’t spin around!) on either side of the back plate so I could have it hung on numerous chains, but I really wanted to wear it right away so I just hung it from the top two.

I finished my first silversmithing class a few weeks ago, we learned how to saw shapes out of metal, the pic above is of me getting ready to saw out my shapes, you can see the outline of the shapes on the brass sheet. You take a metal stick called a scribe, which has a fine point at the end, to draw your shapes.

This is very exciting to me because even without the element of heat and the use of only minimal tools, I can cut out shapes, finish them, and drill holes in them to use for my jewelry! This wooden piece clamped onto the table is used for support to cut metal and also to drill metal, which is why there’s so many holes on top.

The pic above was our project. So this is what I learned to do in the silversmithing class: we learned to saw shapes out of sheets of metal, and then I learned to set a stone in a bezel and solder it onto the cut out shape. I actually didn’t cut this shape, I had cut out some brass oval shapes, but then when I placed the stone on it, it just looked like an eyeball, so I used one of their precut copper pieces cuz we were running out of time.

I felt like Steve Martin in The Jerk, seriously, so clumsy! When I was soldering the silver bezel cup to the copper, it went flying onto the ground and melted the carpet! So now they have a diamond shaped black hole and an oval one. Our work stations faced each other, so the woman working across from me moved to another station, I was like, “you’re scared of me, aren’t you?” and she said “yes!”. Then, when I was drilling the holes, my metal piece spuna around around and flew across the room! sigh…hopefully I’ll get more proficient at this!

I made the necklace above from pieces I repurposed from old jewelry from the thrift store. Made me realize that even though I’m getting brass elements from suppliers now, I should still look for old jewelry, the stuff I take apart has shapes that make me create things I might not have otherwise….

Here’s a pic of the final version, I think the thinner chain looks much better. Although, it was a pain taking apart the cluster and putting it back together. It might look like a random connection of beads, but it actually took forever! If it wasn’t placed in the right spot it would stick out so I kept having to take it apart.

Made a matching set, earrings and necklace. I experimented with different ways to hang the three chains in the middle of the necklace, I had two of them hanging straight down on either side, then I had them connected to more oval pieces, but it all seemed too much. The chain at bottom of earrings is the same as middle of necklace and the oval shape of the earrings are echoed by smaller ones in the necklace.