Silversmithing - half term break

For the last 6 weeks I’ve been doing a beginners Silversmithing course on a Friday evening. We are on half term at the moment then we have another 4 weeks where we can start working on a project of our own design or from one of the many books our teacher brings along. For these first 6 weeks we have covered the basics and worked on 3 small projects to get us going. Our first lesson was spent making a basic plain ring band.  We had to measure our silver and cut using a piercing saw, it’s a  really fine saw blade that doesn’t look anywhere near as scary as the ones I remember from wood tech but it can cut though metal so I have to remind myself it’s pretty hardcore! The silver then needs to be filed at both ends to square them off. This is the most frustrating thing of the whole process, every time I’ve done it I think the ends are square and the teacher files loads more off. Square ends are not my strong point.

Then we had to anneal it which involves flames! You basically heat up the silver with a torch so it glows a dull red colour and then drop it in an acidic solution called pickle then into water. Annealing makes the silver a bit softer and easier to shape. Once it’s been in the pickle and water it’s cold to touch again and ready to work with. (Even after 6 weeks I still don’t really trust that it will be cold but I’m getting there!) After annealing we shaped the ring round a mandrel then bent the ends so they touched and the ring was in a D shape. This was to make it easier to solder, soldering involves more flames and joins the gap to make a solid shape (so long as your ends are square!) Then it was back to the mandrel to make it round again. Once the ring was actually ring shaped it just needed cleaning and polishing then it was ready to wear. Lesson one done and we walked away with a piece of jewellery, not a very exciting one but still one that we made!

Lesson two was spent making a knot ring, this was made with two lengths of wire shaped with a loop at the top and then legs? soldered together. I really couldn’t see how these would make the ring but with a bit of pushing and pulling a knot had formed and we nearly had a ring. Lesson 3 was spent soldering and doing more quality square ends time. Lesson 4 was soldering, shaping and then after a clean and polish another ring was complete! We still had some time left at the end of this lesson to start planning our next project which was learning how to set a stone. Obviously the hardest part of this was which stone to chose – way too many pretty, shiny things!

So lesson 5 started with us checking we’d picked the prettiest stone and thinking about what we wanted to do with it. One of the ladies on my left had made a ring with a split band which I liked the look of, the other two newbies chose to turn their stones into necklaces. To set the stone I had to cut a piece of sheet silver and bezel to the size of my stone, solder them together and file into the right size and shape. I then started to work on my ring, which needed double the amount of square end work (stupid person picked this project) and that’s where I am now. The others are finished with a necklace each, I have an unfinished ring, a stone and a setting and a feeling of regret choosing the hard project. (It will be worth it)