big bows and mouth guards

i still spend my thursdays at Organic Metal Gallery, and when i'm not working on my assignments, i sometimes teach the students who come in how to saw, polish, enamel, and solder. last week Cheryl was in the studio and really wanted to make this big bow necklace. when the enameling process works without problems, a lot can be accomplished in a short amount of time. unfortunately this was not one of those times. but she persevered, and in the end she had a nice 2 sided pendant - storm blue on one side, and lichen green on the other.

in my dental materials class we were learning how to make customized sport mouth guards. the 2nd year denturist students took impressions of our teeth and then we poured up molds to work from.

i'm always excited to learn how to make something new. and since i wear a night guard myself, this kind of thing is particularly relevant to me. my husband is already begging me to make him a sport mouth guard for when he's boxing - he's sick of the bulky ones you buy in the stores.

extending a chain part two

this post is a continuation from a few posts back. after i got the mold and wax injections for Wayne's bracelets made, i sent the wax pieces to the casting house. this is what they looked like once i got them back. 

and then after i cleaned them up. 

cutting through the sterling silver was waaay easier than cutting through the stainless steel of the originals. they were also much easier to open - i didn't have to hurt myself trying to hammer the links apart just to slide them into each other.

i did manage to hurt myself though - it was stupid really. we're taught in school to never ever, ever, try to polish chain on a polishing machine, because it will always get caught. we polish our jewellery with rotating buffs in a machine similar to a grinding machine. i don't know how fast it moves, but it's faster than your eyes can follow. 

since Wayne's bracelet was made of such large links i didn't even consider it to be a chain really. so i was almost done polishing the first bracelet, and i decided to be silly and close the catch, and then polish that too. but the little button on the catch got caught in the machine and pulled the bracelet forward, whipping it around with the wheel and back into my fingers at lightning speed :( it makes me cringe just thinking about it.

 

the impact with the machine made an awful noise that alarmed my studio mate. i then turned off the machine to find that some of my fingers were  numb-ish, swollen, and slightly bloody. i also later developed some nasty looking blood bruises. while this was great in itself, i also had the pleasure of having every jeweller friend i told lecture me on polishing safety :p

anyways...

my fingers are looking much better now and Wayne was uber happy with his bracelets. can you tell which links are sterling silver?

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.

mold making

this is my 200th post! in celebration, you can see how some items of jewellery can be reproduced.

this first kind of mold is a cold mold, and consists of pouring a certain liquid (i can't remember the brand Robin uses right now) around the object into a rectangular frame that is sealed off. after it sets for a day or so you can cut it open to reveal the piece again. this mold can be used on pieces that aren't metal since no heat is required. which means you can make molds of wax carvings and plastics, or organic materials such as twigs and leaves.

or you can do a silicone mold like this which is made up of sticky layers of a foam like material that is wedged into a rectangular frame and around the piece, and then sealed on both sides with aluminum plates. after being clamped together i baked it in an oven (used only for jewellery things!) so the layers melt into each other and form around the piece.

after cutting the mold apart very carefully with an extremely sharp scalpel, you can inject wax into the small opening (the area where the wire is sticking out) to get an exact replica of your piece in wax form as many times as you'd like. then voila! you can then use that wax to cast the copy into metal.

don't mind my disgusting fingers - this is how jewellers hands normally look until we leave the studio. gross right?

some wax carving

since i had so many fans of my fertility charm at the Outdoor Show i decided to carve out a new smaller, lighter, and easier to clean version in wax so i can have it cast in sterling silver in time for the Cabbagetown Arts and Crafts show in September.

when i'm making wax pieces to be cast, i normally work in a very malleable brown wax (this one is covered in purple wax shavings) first so i can get the size and shape right before i move on to carving and refining the final form in the hard wax (the purple wax in this example) with files. the aqua coloured wax is from OCAD's wax injector which creates the form in wax if you've already had a mold made of your original piece.

this new fertility charm is a third of the weight of the original one, about half the size, and has a different texture on the back side.

i've gotten much faster at carving wax now. i'm quite pleased with myself.

p.s. this is my 100th post! crazy.

this is how i work

...always with my hands.