Hi, David. Try some local secondary schools to donate your hand tools. Many include jewellery-making in their Technology curriculum. I know they do here in New Zealand.
But surely you’re not giving up already!
Cheers,
Brian
Denise…I just saw your post. Busy getting the gardens going. Thanks for the birthday wishes. I start with dead soft 18 gauge. When I draw to 20 gauge it seems to have the right amount of hardness to allow me to form the wires and then hold their shape. You will have to experiement o find out what is right for you. I don’t even know what pinton wire is other than I suspect that it is very hard. You can also heat harden silver. I will offer more when I have it…Rob
@rmeixner @jhaemer52 would either of you be willing to post a pic / tutorial of your custom earring jigs? I need a visual to imagine what to do, but would love to have a go at making one or more.
thank you for all of your amazing generosity with time and knowledge. its invaluable !
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Here is a tutorial by Michel Zimmerman for a lovely style of earwires. He uses a homemade jig which will help you see what that is. He has a forum in French called Bijoux a la Cheville at
https://bijouxalacheville.forumactif.org/ (I read the Google translation to English which is what I have attached here) Earring hook alternate style.pdf (132.3 KB)
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Ha ha ha! Thanks Brian for spotting that - no way am I giving up yet. I’m absolutely loving my return to silversmithing and rapidly regaining old skills and learning new ones. As I said, it’ll only be a stroke, heart attack or similar that will stop me now. Hopefully, that gives me quite a few more years of applied creativity to go.
Thank you Sir