A sterling silver link bracelet I made a few weeks ago with 18 leaves created in fold-form fashion similar to the fold-form pendant and earrings I made a while back (though I changed the leaf pattern slightly so they would not have pointed tips to prick the wrist).
The leaves were made out of both 24 and 26 gauge sheet, with O-Ring bales made from 18 gauge round wire and wrapped with a few wraps of 26 gauge wire at the join to match with the fold-form leaf earrings and pendant.
After the leaves were oxidized and buffed, the patina stays in the indentions created by the forming with a cross-peen hammer, helping to give them a more realistic appearance.
The bracelet chain was made out of 16 gauge round wire with 1/8″ I.D. O-Rings, and overall the bracelet turned out well and is very light to wear.
Kathy mentioned that when the leaves jingle against each other, they actually sound a little like leaves in the wind. 😉
A pair of sterling silver bangles stamped with a couple of what I now call the “original” series of stamps my brother and I made from old bolts back in the early-mid ’70’s.
We used them for making southwest-style silver work. They sorely needed refurbishing to be usable again, as 40+ years of rattling around in a tin can at the bottom of a box of tools had taken it’s toll.
To get the stamps in working order again, I cut off the bolt heads (not sure why we didn’t do that when they were first made, other than perhaps having to deal with a dull hack-saw blade), re-annealed and cleaned them up with a bit of filing and sanding to bring them back into shape by taking out the nicks, deepening the grooves, etc.
I then followed that by hardening, tempering and final polish and buff of the working-end. Used together or with common punches, simple designs really are easy to work up.
One bangle was stamped with a southwest-style design, and the other used a portion of another stamp to create a pine needle design of sorts.
Both bangles had their designs stamped only four times around the circumference, and because they’re made with 8 ga. half-round wire, they make for a simple, light and non-intrusive bangle that can stacked and mixed with others to blend with numerous styles of dress. 🙂
Here is one of the gifts I gave my wife on Valentine’s Day 2017…
Sterling silver and copper radial-forged bangles
A sterling silver radial-forged bangle to go with the copper bangle I had made for her in the past (see the Copper Radial Forged Bangle post from back in May 2016 for pictures and information on that).
This one is slightly different though, as I filed, sanded and polished the side surfaces giving them a mirror finish, but left the hammer marks from the forging on the top surfaces as they were (I had left the hammer marks from forging on both the side and top surfaces of the copper bangle).
Here’s another shot of the sterling silver radial-forged bangle with a slightly different view…
Side view of sterling silver and copper radial-forged bangles
Even though the 6 ga. copper wire costs about 85 cents at the hardware store, and 6 ga. sterling silver wire ten times that much, the same work and amount of effort went into forging both bangles.
Yet, oddly enough, you would be surprised at the number of people that won’t flinch at the $200 price tag in a retailer’s catalog for the silver bangle, but would try to argue you down to $20 for the copper version just because it is copper.
Somehow they reason that if the metal is cheap, the price must be, too, no matter how much work went into creating it. :-/
A sterling silver Charm Bracelet I made for Kathy, Christmas (2015)…
A sterling silver Charm Bracelet
I not only alternated link sizes, but hammer-forged the smaller links so that they would increase the sparkle of the bracelet as well as link the charm links together.
She loved it (and of course I created a neat little charm to go with it), but perhaps the one thing she thought was coolest about it was that tiny little “.925” tag I made for it. 😉
That tag actually serves a dual purpose. The most obvious is to mark the bracelet as sterling silver, but it can also be used to assist with clasping the bracelet closed. It allows the wearer (or someone else) to grasp the tag and guide the closing O-ring into the spring-loaded lobster clasp, giving them a bigger target to work with than if they had to grasp the closing O-ring itself.
Check out the Christmas Tree Charm I created and had hanging off the bracelet when she opened the present that morning for pictures and information on that. No doubt I’ll see a lot more charms making their way to the bench in the future!
A sterling silver Overlay Scroll Cuff made in 2014…
A sterling silver overlay scroll cuff
It was definitely a challenge, but I was inspired by the work of Harufumi SHIRAKI demonstrated in one of his YouTube videos.
Seeing him working with his saw also enlightened me that a long, flat bench pin with about a 1/8″ slot down the middle for a few inches or so makes piercing cuffs, bracelets and long items sooooo much easier than with a “normal” V-slot bench pin, which often restrict you from using certain angles or areas on the pin due to its shorter length and/or openness of the “V”.
So much so, that after I made one and started using it, I now find myself constantly swapping between it and a “regular” pin on literally every project since, using it for the vast majority of my piercing work now, and don’t know how anyone can do without one!
Side view of the sterling silver overlay scroll bracelet
For this cuff I drew out about an inch of the scroll pattern on paper with ends that would match up to each other, then scanned that and paste/fit the digital pieces together to create one long continuous scroll, then printed the pattern off for use as the template.
Using both 6/0 and 8/0 blades to pierce the top layer with tight, sharp corners took a lot of patience (and not to mention more than a few blades!).
It turned out really nice and is one of the pieces I’m especially proud of to this very day, although my photographs certainly don’t do it justice. 🙁
Here are a couple pictures of a Radial Forged Bangle that I fabricated from heavy-gauge copper wire…
Slanted top-view of the copper radial forged bangle.
The geometric design is achieved from radial forging, continuously alternating from sections on the sides forged on a round bracelet mandrel, to sections on the top surfaces forged on a domed anvil until the desired design and size needed is eventually reached.
The forging hammer marks are left on the sides and top surfaces, but the bangle’s inside is sanded smooth, and then the entire piece buffed and polished.
Side view of a copper radial forged bangle. I’ve since made quite a few of these for family and friends.
Created from 6 gauge wire stock purchased from the local hardware store, the material for this project came out to about 85 cents, so it’s certainly not an expensive project to complete in that regard.
This bangle is also the first project out of Alan Revere’s most excellent book, “Professional Jewelry Making”, although I have also seen bangles like this advertised by at least one well-known retailer for $200 in sterling (which are made in the very same way with the same amount of effort, but just with a more expensive metal alloy). 😉
A forged sterling silver anticlastic cuff with hammered texture.
After forging the cuff, leaving in the hammer marks from the chasing hammer, it was then formed using a wooden forming stake and a Delrin “dead-blow” cross-peen hammer to give it the anticlastic curves without removing the forging marks, allowing it to have even more ability to play with light and reflections as it’s worn.
I didn’t have any anticlastic stakes for forming this cuff, but thanks to a YouTube video by Torch Song, I made myself a couple of wood forming stakes that look like little Bullwinkle horns, and using one of them to form this cuff worked great. 😉
Making the wooden stakes is not at all difficult. All that’s really needed apart from a couple hours or so of free time is a hardwood board of adequate size, a ruler, a pencil compass, a drill with hole-saw attachments of various sizes, a regular hand saw, a half-round rasp and file (a “4-in-1” rasp/file combo would work well), and some sandpaper in course, medium and fine grits.
I used some scrap 1″x10″ oak board about 12″ long, and as I had the hole-saw attachments from past household jobs, including a hand-held router, drill and table saw at my disposal, the build was even easier for me as I was able to bypass a lot of the rasping, filing, sawing and sanding that you would need to do if you don’t have those tools.
With the tools, supplies and the board in hand, draw a line down the center of the board’s length and evenly space centered circles of various diameters that you have hole-saw attachments for down the line, leaving plenty of space between the circles and the bottom of the board for support, as you’ll be banging metal on them and don’t want the stake to break there.
Using the hole-saws, drill out the circles, then cut the entire board in half lengthwise with a straight saw and you’ll have two identical halves with half-circles cut out down its length. Using the half-round rasp and file, round off the edges of the half-holes in the stakes, finish smoothing them out with the sandpaper and you’ve got yourself an anticlastic forming stake!
By securing one of the stakes in a vise and using the half-circle valleys in the anticlastic stake you can shape the cuff, which will take on the form of that valley’s rounded walls as well as start the bending of the metal into the circular cuff shape. Below is a close-up of the few valley’s in the stake I used to form this cuff…
You have to be careful to work the metal evenly though, so that the two ends of the cuff work to meet each other, otherwise you will wind up with a corkscrew shape with one end headed in one direction and the other end headed in the opposite direction.
If that problem seems too difficult for you to overcome when you first start forming anticlastic cuffs, you might try bending the flat metal (cut a little longer than you need for the cuff) around a regular bracelet mandrel and soldering the two ends together to make a closed bangle.
Then, slip the bangle over the end of the stake to the desired valley (you may need to trim the underside of the stake, depending on how wide of a board was used), and when you start forming the anticlastic curves you can be sure the ends will always meet because they already are! 😉
When you’re done with your anticlastic forming of the bangle, cut out the portion that includes the soldered seam for the open area of the cuff and very little tweaking should be needed to align the two ends perfectly. Or, leave it soldered closed and keep it as a bangle if it’s the right size!
