Sunday, December 12, 2010

My first soldered ring...

In October/November I took a class with Brandon Holschuh at the Valley Arts Center.  Brandon is the author of  The Jeweler's Studio Handbook: Traditional and Contemporary Techniques for Working with Metal and Mixed Media Materials

The Jeweler's Studio Handbook: Traditional and Contemporary Techniques for Working with Metal and Mixed Media Materials

I never really blogged about it because it was a really busy time.  If you ever get a chance to take a class with Brandon, I recommend it.  He is a kick for sure.  Full of energy and ready to share what he knows.  The class was even more fun since Brenda, Deb, Katie, Carmen, and Ann were also taking it.



 I had played with soldering only a couple times but never really made anything.  So the goal of this class for me was to make a ring.  I used one of the cabs I have from Gary Wilson and made the ring below.




It's not perfect. It's big for a pinky ring.  It was suppose to be for my ring finger but I cut the band too small.  The bezel was a challege to smooth down and I still need to work on it.  But it's OK...I'll take it for my first try.

This class did hook me on soldering.  With the price of silver so high I decided to turn in my silver scrap and use the credit to get a mini torch.
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4 comments:

Shannon Chomanczuk said...

Looks very nice to me, you could always gift it to someone with small fingers.
Shannon C

Deb said...

Gail, your ring looks great. It really is a fun class.

Katie Hanrahan said...

Wow, it turned out fabulous! I haven't finished mine yet - bezel is too deep so I have to file it down. Still say metal clay is waayyy easier!

Cristina Leonard said...

Very nice, Gail. Nice job fitting the stone,