This is not a strange customer request I personally had but one of
my instructors from many years ago told me about it.
During the early stages of the Vietnam conflict, he had a young lady
come to him and ask that he fit her with a chastity belt so she could
be true to her soldier love headed for the war. He made it clear to
her that she would have to be naked when he did it and she agreed.
She arrived at his home, stripped, and lay down on the kitchen
table. He placed the belt on her, added a thick layer of wet asbestos
(yes it was still in use then) and soldered it on.
Never did learn how she did with it or if she ever had it taken
off!!
Cheers from Don at The Charles Belle Studio in SOFL where simple
elegance IS fine jewelry!
A heavily tattooed and pierced man came in the shop with a bag of
large glass marbles. He wanted them cut in half and the sharp edges
rounded off. Out of curiosity, I asked him what he was going to use
them for. He said that he was going to have them implanted under his
skin along his shoulder blades for a dinosaur affect. ???
A couple came into the shop with a diamond solitaire type ring with
2 open teardrop areas on each side of the diamond. they presented me
with 2 elks teeth and wanted me to inlay a portion of each tooth
into the teardrop area on each side of the diamond. After I finished
the job, I inquired about the reason they wanted to use the elks
teeth. Turns out their first date was a hunting trip and the future
bride had shot the elk.
This is one of my favorites
I was working for this shop and a guy came in Inquiring about
selling dental gold. It was around noonish and the Owner and Manager
were at lunch together. So I was in the shop with the owners
daughter that came in usually once or twice a week just to help
around lunch time. She really didn’t now much about the biz. Well,
we tell the guy that we buy dental gold and I place a pad on the
counter figuring the guy will pull out a bag of old bridges and
crowns. This guy reaches into his mouth and yanks out a crown from
one of his back teeth and lays it on the pad and asks how much. The
owners daughter goes to grab the crown with her bare hands, I jump
in and tell her “don’t touch that nasty thing”. After picking it up
with tweezers and soak in alcohol, I weigh the crown and give him a
price. He says “o.k. thanks for the price” pops the crown back into
his mouth, and walks out the door.
Interesting thread!!! I was teaching Lost Wax Casting in an Adult
Ed class - carving wax forms. Had two dentists as students. One of
the dentists wanted to cast a Univ. of Colo. Bear! In his hand was a
mass of gold about 2 1/2 inches round and 3/8 inch thick! SOOOO after
sawing off a section he did cast the tiny Golden Bear. How did he
amass such a glob???
And speaking of gold crowns - I had a dentist refuse to give me my
extracted tooth with a gold crown, saying it was contaminated! Thus
another dentist with a glob!
I had a request to make first a sterling, then later a white gold,
then a platinum vasoconstrictor (for a man who was a paraplegic.) I
gave him a thick wax wire and instructed him how to determine the
diameter of his…object, then he brought it back to be cast. The
subsequent ones were made using a mold of the silver one.
A number of years ago I was running a sculpture studio in Los
Angeles. A guy walked in and told me he owned the largest pearl in
the world-- worth $43 million dollars! It was a famous pearl
apparently, having accrued names like the “Pearl of Siam,” and many
others, over the years. There were nemerous stories connected it,
filled with intrigue, murder, etc.
The guy wanted me to make an exact copy of it so that he could take
it on television in a bid to sell it. So I had to go to a bank vault
in Burbank with all my mold-making materials in order to cast this
thing.
It was really not pretty! It was as big as a softball, and had many
pearlescent bumps on it, and it looked like a brain to me. But,
under the scrutiny of the bank’s security force, I made may mold,
went back to the shop, and created a copy. I used polyester resin
with pearlescent pigments, and I had to fill it with bb’s in order to
make it weigh as much as the original.
Customer was happy, and I never saw him again. I wonder if he sold
it…
Set a diamond in a ring without metal touching stone
I had an Aero-space engineer design an engagement ring where the
diamond hovered over the mounting by 5mm. I asked him to explain to
me how I was to accomplish this physics defying feat? He looked at me
astonished and said, “isn’t that the way they are all done?”
Ah yes, the anti-gravity engagement ring.
Nanz Aalund
Associate Editor / Art Jewelry magazine
21027 Crossroads Circle / Waukesha WI 53187-1612
262.796.8776 ext.228
“Here’s a good one from when I first started out: “Can you take all
of these tiny little diamonds and melt them into one big one?”” Oh
my that is a great one!!! Started my day with a laugh. I have done
five necklaces now with a round celtic box that I make in the middle
of them and stored inside is the fur of the customer’s animals that
have passed away, last year a good client wanted me to put the ashes
in and for that one I had to place them in a little plastic baggie so
they would not escape from the tiny holes in the box where the chain
goes through. I call them memory reliquiaries and love doing them.
Strange perhaps but an untapped market for sure, the local head of
the MSPCA found out about me and now wants me to make up a brochure
for them to give to people when they bring their pets in to be
euthanized. I feel honored to help them allay their grief.
Got a phone call one afternoon from someone from MIT. They asked
if we did platinum soldering. I said of course. They said they had a
piece of a rocket that was made of platinum and needed to be
soldered to fairly exacting specifications. They also said they
needed it the next day and that they couldn’t say anything else about
what the project was. Being somewhat of a space nut I was sorely
disappointed. Ended up staying until close to midnight to get it done
for them.
Got another phone call from a guy at MIT. He said he was working
on his thesis which involved the way that people see urban
landscapes around them while they were walking. He had designed a
piece that was connected to your feet and your head so that when you
took a step with your left foot a shutter would open and close in
front of your right eye and when you took a step with your right foot
a shutter would open and close in front of your left eye. His problem
was that the head piece was unwieldy and he also needed a way to be
able to lift it up from in front of his eyes periodically. A jeweler
buddy of mine and I sat down and brainstormed and then realized we
had the perfect solution. Took apart one of our jeweler’s Optivisors
and attached his eye pieces to the front instead of the piece with
our lenses. He was one happy guy. Sometimes it pays to be located in
this bastion of all the great universities.
Daniel R. Spirer, G.G.
Daniel R. Spirer Jewelers, LLC
1780 Massachusetts Ave.
Cambridge, MA 02140
Yep, I have made a wedding ring out of gold provided by bride’s
dentist father. I didnt realise you can get different finenesses of
dental gold until I obtained some more recently for recasting. I am
currently sitting with a lump of dental silver I was given for
analysis/strength testing. Unlike gold, it is not suitable for
jewellery work due to its composition but the powdered silver used in
amalgan makes a good niello.
Regarding those used gold crowns, they apparently stink to high
heaven when you go to melt them. When I was a guest student in
Pforzheim, one of the regular students came in one day with her
grandmother’s old crown (or filling, or something) & asked the
teacher to melt it for her. He agreed to do it, but made her stand
there with him, so he wasn’t the only one enjoying the odor.
Interesting thought, though, that the dentists would just hold onto
the used bits of gold, then later use them to make something for
themselves, or sell it for cash, for that matter. Eew!
Decades ago I was asked via mail to make a bracelet which would be
permanently attached to a man’s wrist, until the passage of the
Equal Rights Amendment (equal rights for women) in the USA. She said
that her guy had lost a bet with her, and so he had to wear this. She
also enclosed a photo of him taken from the back, wearing a house
maid’s dress type uniform. He was a large and strong looking Black
man, stuffed into this tight, traditional women’s dress, stockings,
and shoes. Her surname led me to believe that she was not Black. The
interracial servitude and punishment aspect of this request really
creeped me out. Besides, I did not like giving a negative spin to
something that I personally supported. I declined the commission,
despite being in favor of the ERA. It just didn’t seen at all right
to me. (Now, please don’t jump to the conclusion that I am against
interracial relationships. Nothing could be further from the truth!)
I think that I still have that strange letter filed in my customer
request file. Too strange to make, too strange to throw away.
He had designed a piece that was connected to your feet and your
head so that when you took a step with your left foot a shutter
would open and close in front of your right eye and when you took
a step with your right foot a shutter would open and close in
front of your left eye.
This is not a jewelry thing at all, but the above reminded me, and I
found it fascinating:
A researcher used students as subjects, and established that humans
could follow a scent trail across a field (on their hands and
knees), though not nearly as well as a dog. She then devised an
apparatus that made the subjects sniff through a single tube or two
separate tubes next to each other-- stereo or mono-nasal smelling,
if you will-- and found that the subjects followed a scent trail
much more efficiently when they had stereo.
I somehow find this reassuring.
Sadly, I don’t recall who did this or where. California, I’m
guessing.
Daniel Spirer’s story about the MIT guy who needed the weird goggles
reminded me of a time back about 1965 in Provincetown, MA when old
Antonio came into our shop. The three of us in the shared workspace
included a musical instrument repairman, a jeweler, and a builder -
an odd combination, I know, but maybe that’s why Antonio came to us
first. He was accompanied by his ancient basset hound, Snuffy, who
suffered from a condition called “haw” This is a sort of drooping of
the lower eyelids. You can understand the name if you look in a
mirror and see the shape your mouth assumes when saying the word
"haw." The result of this condition is that when the low-slung beast
accompanied Anthony on his daily walks through the woods, his
eyeballs would accumulate collections of dust and fragments of bark,
twigs, bugs and whatever fell into the gaping space behind the lower
eyelid. Anthony asked us if we could make a set of goggles for
Snuffy that would protect his eyes.
Truthfully I can’t remember how the problem was solved, but I know
it was done somehow. Anyway I didn’t do it. All I do remember clearly
is the utter puzzlement with which we three geniuses all examined the
long-suffering Snuffy’s remarkable head and face. All those
shapeless, loose folds, floppy earflaps, slippery slobbering jowls,
dangly bits and all the other endearing qualities that characterize
the basset hound breed. He smelled kind of memorable too, I recall.
One of the few times in my life when the word “impossible” was the
first thing that came to mind. But I did find a deeper respect for
Antonio. I was touched by his caring and compassion for his dear
companion and for his creative persistence in searching for a
solution
Marty Hykin, in Victoria, where folks are somewhat stunned by that
large shining object in the sky.
Interesting thought, though, that the dentists would just hold
onto the used bits of gold, then later use them to make something
for themselves,....
Over the years, in discussions with dentists, and their spouses, I
have found that a large percentage are wearing jewelry made by the
dentist. After all, our industry stole the lostwax casting process
from the dental industry. The pieces I have seen were often not the
most finely crafted or stylish, but still made by the spousal
dentist. I don’t know whether they use the gold they steal from their
patients, or trade to refineries for new gold. Over the years, I have
had many dentists asking for advise on wax work, as well as casting,
but I have never had one offer to pay for, or trade their work or
knowledge in trade for mine. Needless to say, I simply play dumb(not
rude) on their questions. People asking how to do it themselves
seldom turn into paying, profitable customers for a retailer.
About two years ago I got an e-mail from a couple who wanted to wear
vials of each other’s blood.
They wanted to know if I would make decorative holders out of silver
to hold small glass vials of blood.
After I was through gagging, I told them no, and I referred the
question to this list to see if anybody else wanted that job.
Someone out here said they’d done it before (!). I also got a reply
stating that some Hollywood couple was wearing such items, and that
was where the person who asked me probably got the idea. I forgot
all about it until this thread came up.
I Googled it just now and found out that the Hollywood couple in
question (now divorced) didn’t even use vials-- they each put just
one drop of their blood into a locket for the other one. The media
had apparently turned lockets with a drop of blood into vials
containing several cc’s of blood. Amazing how some things get blown
out of proportion in the re-telling, isn’t it?
I’m working on a set of mourning pendants containing a pet’s ashes.
I have, over the years, made several mourning pendants containing
human cremains. It’s a strangely intimate experience…
Over the years, I have had many dentists asking for advise on wax
work, as well as casting, but I have never had one offer to pay
for, or trade their work or knowledge in trade for mine. Needless
to say, I simply play dumb(not rude) on their questions."
I have to say that dentists have been one of my most favorite
clients!
My dentist and I have been bartering for as long as I can remember. I
have 3 crowns and endless cleanings,etc. from my dentist and she
even used her own gold.
And both of my children have straight teeth due to my barter with
their orthodontist.
Not all dentist want to make jewelry. and because of their
knowledge, they can appreciate the work.
Over the years, in discussions with dentists, and their spouses, I
have found that a large percentage are wearing jewelry made by the
dentist.
I find this interesting because I bought my first casting machine
from a dentist in Indianapolis over 25 years ago while I was
stationed at Ft. Harrison. I had taken my young son to get his braces
adjusted and the dentist called me in to look at something. While he
was pointing into the open mouth I noticed a gold ring on his finger
that could only be custom made. I asked him if he made it and he said
he did. He said he made his own rings for his wedding. I told him I
made jewelry and hoped to have a casting machine someday. He got a
big smile on his face and said come with me. He took me into the next
room and said he was willing to part with the small centrifugal
caster he had used in dental school. I knew this was my big chance
and didn’t want to blow it so I timidly asked how much. He said,
Would five dollars be too much? I still have it today and still use
it for small projects even though it looks like it belongs in a
museum. We discussed the finer points of casting for several more
minutes and then returned to the dental chair where my poor son was
still sitting with his mouth open!