extending a chain part one

Wayne came by to visit me with the hope of elongating his two stainless steel bracelets. i had never seen links in a bracelet that were as huge as this. i was a little wary at first since i had no experience working with stainless steel before but fortunately for Wayne i was scheduled to attend Shao Pin's stainless steel workshop that  weekend.

basically, i had to remove a link from the bracelet and make a mold of it so that i could cast two new ones in sterling silver. i didn't have the right saw blades for stainless steel, so it took me a lot longer than usual to saw through the link, and when i finally cut it i had to twist it open to remove it from the rest of the chain. unlike with a smaller chain, to twist a link this large required a lot of blows with a hammer with the piece clamped in place.

stainless steel is a much harder metal than sterling silver, so i anticipated that it would require more effort, but it was even tougher than i imagined. 

once i got it out, i had to smash it back into shape which was equally as difficult.

and then after i got a mold made, i had some wax injections done to be sent off to the casting house.

more pictures of the process and a small injury =( later.