My wife Kathy just loves Nativity scenes (we’ve got several around the house) so when a free weekend came up, I decided to spend it in the shop and knock out a domed Nativity scene pendant for her.
I pierced the design in 24 ga. sheet with a jeweler’s saw using a 4/0 blade. I then used a hand graver to form Joseph’s staff to give it the appearance of wood, soldered the pierced overlay to the 26 ga. base, and followed that by giving it a domed shape on a dapping block. 16 ga. round wire was used to create the bale and O-ring before the piece went through the finishing, polishing, patina and final polishing stages. She loves it. 😀
Apologies for the reflections in the finished piece, as I am not a photographer and Kathy isn’t finished with her homemade light box setup for taking pictures of shiny surfaces. 😉
When I had TXT’d a picture of Kathy’s Nativity scene pendant to my brother and his wife saw it, she fell in love with it as well. Since I was waiting for some network build-out at work to be completed before I could move my DNS and SAN devices to the company’s new datacenter, I had the following weekend free as well and decided to knock out another pendant for her.
I used the same pattern and materials as with Kathy’s pendant, only I deviated slightly and pierced Joseph’s staff with a 4/0 saw blade instead of forming it with a graver. There are other slight differences as well (being hand-made), and I made the star slightly larger on this pendant.
And, if you read the text above for Kathy’s Nativity pendant, ditto on the apologies for the reflections in the finished piece. Oh, and my brother’s wife loves hers, too. 😉