We live in the Pacific NW where it’s wet all the time. Well except
for maybea couple of months in the summer.
We soaked large sponges in oil and jammed them in at the top and
bottom ofour mill so that as we roll, the rollers are cleaned and
oiled at the sametime.
Have fun and make lots of jewelry.
Jo Haemer
timothywgreen.com
Been using this methoid for about 40 years still works very well.
sponges and oil are nice.
Hi all!
I’ve made some progress learning how to use some silversmithing tools
properly, even if I’m really not doing silversmithing with them.
For Christmas, I made my sister-in-law a hand-made bracelet. It isn’t
much, but it used a few new skills.
But she likes elephant-themed gifts and I thought I could surprise
her.
Here’s what I did.
One of the people from the Ganoksin group had sent me a sheet of
brass plate with patterns of elephants and palm trees in it.
The plate was bent and also rusted. It was also unbendable, I would
have to anneal it first.
I had the sudden idea of machining out a master pattern of an
elephant so I could cut out elephant shapes from stock printed with
elephants. I thought it as an elephant, oops, I mean elegant, idea.
I coated the plate using the Pripps Flux I synthesized from a recipe
off a link. Spraying first and then boiling off with my propane
plumber’s torch seemed to get the borate deposits cleanly on the
plate without creating worse oxidation.
I then turned off the lights, made several passes on both sides of
the plate, and then squenched in my Sparex pot.
Like an idiot, though, I had handled the plate with a steel pliers,
and then turned the other side of the plate into the Sparex bath.
Evidently even a miniscule amount of dissolved iron can plate the
metal with copper.
The plating wasn’t so bad though. There was only a tiny amount of it,
and I didn’t figure my SIL could care, in fact she might even see it
as pretty.
And the brass was now shiny after scrubbing with soap and water.
After drying, I rolled it through my rolling mill several times. It
was now only slightly warped as opposed to badly so.
Anyhow, I machined out an elephant about a square inch in area using
my CNC (breaking a pair of .03 end-mills plus an V-cutter in the
process!) for a master pattern.
I had to machine a wooden fixture to attach to my CNC table which I
could screw down the brass plate onto while cutting out my master
pattern.
But the plate was still enough warped that while some area would be
safe, others would get suddenly too deep and break the tip.
I probably should have annealed the plate twice. As it was, I broke
$24 in endmills making this pattern but I got it finished by being
extremely conservative in my passes for both depth and feed rate.
Since I didn’t want to break more end-mills, I thought I should just
cut out a set of elephants by tracing around the master elephant
template using a razor point laundry marker (Sharpie) and then using
the jewelers saw to cut them out.
I used a Dremel knife sharpening bit for deburring the exterior of
the pattern. I then used a finer grit diamond dental burr (surplus
from the local dentist) for the less accessable areas, and to double
as sanding all edges smooth.
I decided not to bother polishing. I tried a felt wheel on my Dremel
on the back of a piece of unused material with some Zam.
It made the color look like polished white metal, which was not what
I wanted.
I then used a hole punch someone else on Ganoksin had sent me, and I
punched holes for two eyes and a copper wire “tail”, on each of the
seven copies of the elephant that would comprise the bracelet.
I then found copper wire from my leftover heavy gauge #6 stranded for
grounding this summer’s electrical hookup, each of the strands equal
to about 18-gauge.
I cut two inch pieces, bent them at right angles at 3/4 inch from
both ends of each piece, and connected each piece the hole near the
tail edge, with the eye closest to the right hand edge.
My original deadline was Christmas, and I just managed to make it
albeit I was in a great deal of pain at the time. An hour later I was
in the ER for an inflamed pancreas and for passing a kidney stone.
My wife was with me, God bless her, and her compassion and concern
and love were the very best Christmas present a man could ever have.
With that, I needed nothing else.
I was also more than a little concerned for my daughter witnessing
the torture my own body was subjecting me to, but she wanted to also
go with me to the ER, and she gave me one of her cuddle blankets to
feel less lonely in the hospital I was eventually transported to.
I spent a little less than a day for observation. My wife, daughter,
and family chose to delay opening presents at my house until I
returned.
My SIL’s face lit up when she saw the bracelet. I told her, “this is
what I do for sisters”, and I got a short hug for that.
So, I haven’t soldered yet, but at least I practiced using a couple
tools necessary for soldering eventually.
Cheers,
Andrew Jonathan Fine
Hi Andrew,
Congratulations!! 1st step for a beginner but a giant leap for
Andrew!! There, you see, look where your imagination can take you.
Now, elephants could be your thing for the immediate future, an
elephant doesnt move very fast, but when it makes up its mind to go
some place theres little that can stop it.
So can you.
How about this for an idea ?
Cutting out an elephant shape using a jewellers saw or any form of
tooling is difficult, so why not go the embossing route? ie a raised
elephant on a piece of metal?
a circle is the easiest to make with a simple press tool. Metal?
copper is perfectly suitable, its soft, nice colour, and embossing is
easy.
Cheapest place to get that is at your local scrap yeard, say a
copper hot water tank. Enough copper for 1000 key fobs or more. cut it
up, anneal using your plumbers torch no need for pripps flux, dunk in
old battery acid. Works a treat. rinse off in hot wash up liquid and
water, to neutralise nice clean soft metal. So, what product? how
about a key fob, in a limited edition of say 100 to start with. Use 2
of the embossed discs soldered together, how to do this more another
time, With it marked and dated AF13 as your first product. Id want one
@ say $10.00 each plus p&p. How best to pay you? If you were nearer
you could come and use my fly press to do this. Time to make 100? max
3 to 4 days.
worth doing for $1000.00? Way to go. Then with the profit get yourself
some more tooling and youd be on your way to making it work
artistically, and financially. Go for it.
Ted.
Once youve the tooling theres no end to the products you can
interpret this idea, till you get bored with it, then think up
another.
Congratulations on getting the bracelet done dispite all obstacles.
Have a productive and healthy new year. Sheri
Good job and your perserevance is to be commended !!!You are an
inspiration as I(Jo-Ann) struggle taking a wide tapered band up 3
1/2 sizes.Withaninitial bead set on top… Take care & Happy New
Year to all… Ciao, J&J Donivan in Sunny SF
Andrew sorry to hear you were I’ll, BUT glad you are home and
feeling better. I like your project and the changes you made when
things didn’t go according to plan. Bravo! And don’t worry about the
copper plate that appeared when you pickled the brass after
annealing. You did not contaminate your pickle! It’s just the nature
of brass when heating and pickling. I’m sure many will be happy to
tell you ways to remove the copper, including “super pickle”. For
now I just wanted you to know that it happens and to plan
accordingly. Keep at it.
Kay Cummins
OutAndAboutGirls
Way to go, Andrew! Now to learn how to take photos of jewelry. I can
see the idea of the bracelet though and we’re all proud of you for
trying. 
Hope you’re feeling better now and have a Happy and
Healthier New Year.
Michele
Hi,
I had a bout of pancreatitis last week from a slipped gallstone,
about the same time as I was finishing the elephant bracelet for my
sister-in-law’s Christmas present. I stayed in the emergency room
much of Christmas Eve, then was driven to a hospital where they held
me for observation much of Christmas Day.
I will be having outpatient surgery to remove my gall bladder on
Monday, and I expect to be pretty much switch-off for the entire week
on pain-pills as I recover at home.
Anyway. I’d like some help thinking something through.
A couple friends of mine are having a public wedding ceremony in
April. I would like to make them a couple of sterling silver rings.
I had a rather thick (8 - 10 gauge) and heavy (an ounce or more)
plate of sterling left over from a cast that a Dine’ silversmith had
walked me through a few years ago. Since my funds are very limited, I
have decided that this plate no longer needed to be a personal
memento.
What I thought to do was practice using Pripp’s Flux and Sparex on
sterling to prevent firescale.
My spray pump bottle loaded with Pripp’s had jammed from solution
which crystallized while hospitalized so that was useless. I thought
to apply the flux using bits of paper towel and then drying that off
using my propane bottle. It worked, after a fashion, but I was afraid
I would set the paper towel afire.
Just on a whim, I used a cotton ear swab (I keep some around for
cleaning tight spots) to dab the Pripp’s onto the plate after lightly
heating it with the propane.
The water sizzled straight away, leaving a perfect thin coat of white
flux on the metal. Soon enough I had both sides coated with the flux.
I turned off the lights and hit the metal full force.
Which didn’t make it glow at all, since the piece was way too big for
that, but at least the propane made my plate hot enough to anneal. I
quenched in Sparex, then I dipped the plate in a bowl of water to
dilute remaining traces of pickle, then I scrubbed it clean with a
different bowl of water and a steel wool pad, and then rinsed the
soap off in yet a different bowl of water.
I ran the plate several times through the rolling mill to even it out
and eliminate the markings. I annealed again, and I was done.
Next step was to measure out ring blanks.
I’m still not yet ready to solder. I’ll get there eventually, believe
me, but I thought fluxing and pickling for annealing sterling would
be a good intermediate training step.
So, I decided to cut washers. I found ring gauges that one of you
people had mailed to me some time ago. Given that the metal was
approximately 4 millimeters thick, I decided that if I did it right
(and allowed a lot of room for error), could possibly just simply
forge the rings to perhaps 12 millimeters width and 3 millimeters
height, if I did a great many anneal/forge cycles. But I’m not in any
hurry!
The groom told me he was size 12 (he was delighted when I told him I
wanted to try to make a backup pair of wedding bands to use when they
didn’t feel the gold ones appropriate), and that the bride was a size
7.
What I did to measure was this: For the groom I took a size 10 gauge
and drew a circle on the sterling by the inside diameter of the
gauge. Then I used the size 12 gauge and drew a circle on the outside
diameter.
For the bride. gauge 7 exterior, gauge 5 interior.
I reasoned that if I allowed some extra metal on the interior I
should be able to start by forging the ring lower in height and
thicker at gauge 10, and then when I was completely ready forge it
upward on my mandrel (a sawed off section of pool cue as suggested by
an Australian silversmith I had friended on Facebook) for an exact
fit at gauge 12.
I plan to make simple sterling bands which I will later engrave with
something uplifting. Definitely not along the lines of “Ash nazg
thrakatuluk” (ha ha)!
I have some questions about my approach:
Given the attached picture, am I starting with too much metal, or
not enough?
How wide can a wedding band be, and still be light and
comfortable? I’m aiming for a half inch on both.
Do I need to arch the inside of the ring from edges low to center
high increase comfort?
I figure since I am going to be in bed for a while I might as well
read and think about the answers.
Thanks for your advice and encouragement so far!
Andrew Jonathan Fine
Sorry you are having a health problem, and hope that you will be up
and about in record time. I send you my best wishes for a speedy
recovery.
Alma
