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.

stainless steel workshop

i was very fortunate to have the opportunity to attend a Stainless Steel Fabrication workshop with Shao-Pin Chu this past sunday. he was a guest speaker at OCAD three years ago and no one has forgotten him since then. his work is impeccable and his sense of craftsmanship is amazing. he also has a beautiful studio space that is insanely clean (for a craftsperson).

look at his bench, everything is so organized! remember mine? no comparison.

and here's his soldering station.

i'm so glad i got to know him since he is so knowledgeable and willing to share that knowledge. i learned so much in this one day class.

he was showing us this piece, and we were already amazed at some of the components that he employs in simple things like catches and then he held it by the bottom and twisted. i swear our mouths dropped open when it started spinning quickly and smoothly. it was unreal. to put it in one of my classmates words "it just doesn't stop!" - not the spinning, but his greatness. lol.

he's continuing to run all kinds of workshops at his studio, and i hope to take another one soon. it was such a good experience. 

you should check out his website, besides being a jeweller, he is also an industrial designer as well as a furniture designer.

he told us that this chair here took him 10 days, 14 hours a day just to hand finish the legs. that is craftsmanship like no other.