Silver work

Here are some pics of pieces that I have been working on.



I am going to rivet this to another piece of PMC or copper to make a pendant. I really like the design. This came from a stamp designed by Teesha and Tracy Moore.



The front and back of a 2-layer pendant. A little macabre. Again...stamps from Teesha and Tracy Moore's website.

Prototype for some earrings that I am working on. I didn't know if I would like the design so I only made only one. I think now I will make a couple pairs after I perfect the technique of wrapping the strip around the lentil. Maybe some PMC that has been mixed with glycerin would work better for the center strip.

This is one of the hearts that I am working on. It looks better in person. I hammered this to pieces to give it a worn look....I had too...more on that later.

I discovered 2 things making this heart...a number of instructors have told me that you can use a butane torch to make the initial ball on silver wire, but you can't use it to ball the back side. Butane isn't hot enough and the piece itself ends up being a heat sink. You need a really hot flame to ball the back ...much hotter than you can get from butane. But I thought I would try it anyway. When the butane torch didn't work....I tried a propane torch. Still not hot enough. The only thing that I accomplished was to heat up the entire pieces and melt some of the enamal on my washing machine...which was the surface I was torching on. So if I want to ball both ends of the wire I need a propane/oxygen mix. Rio has a set up but I don't know if I am comfortable with having an oxygen tank in my house. This doesn't really make sense since I alreayd have a butane torch and a propane torch in the garage...so I might as well invest in a propane/oxygen torch

The other thing that I learned is that I can't rivet very well. When I couldn't ball up the wire with heat...I decide to rivet the back. Part of the problem is the heart has a slanting surface so it was hard to hold the piece the right way to get the rivet going. I did eventually get it to work...but not before I marred the surface of the heart....which is why I ended up hammering it to make it look old...to hide the marks I made by mistake. I need to get some help on riveting.