Howcast

How to Work with Silver in Jewelry Making

Howcast — Mon, 25 Jul 2011 14:52:02 +0000

Transcript

Courtney Gray: Welcome to Creative Side Jewelry Academy of Austin, online at creativeside.org. I’m Courtney Gray. I started my school here, Creative Side Jewelry Academy, four years ago. I’m here in Austin, and I’m going to tell you about jewelry making today.

So today I’m going to talk to you about one way that I approach making silver and gold jewelry, and that’s carving wax. I teach this here at the school. This is one of my favorite ways to create jewelry. If you’re doing rings, you’re going to start with a tube of wax, cut your wax according to size and width that you need. The purple is a little bit more flexible, the green wax a little bit more brittle.

Order yourself a little kit. This is process that, you know, it takes patience, but luckily it’s very fun and relaxing to work with this material. One thing you’re going to need to get to cut designs out of wax is a spiral blade. This is a blade with teeth that go all the way around, allowing the wax to simply fall out of the piece as it cuts. Start your blade and cut around. Now these cut a wider line, so you want to be sure to stay outside that line. These blades are wonderful, you can go in almost any direction with this circular blade, which is very unlike working in metal. Try to keep your soft frame at a 90 degree angle.

I love wax because it lends itself to a more sculptural look. You can make really dimensional pieces with it, it’s really neat stuff. This is a really lovely tool, it’s double-sided. There’s a coarse side and a fine side. Then you can carve down using this tool, I use this tool for a lot of roughing out, and then I go back in with finer tools like dental picks. A lot of wax carvers will use an Exacto knife.

Once you’ve created your wax, you’ve got to get it perfect, exactly how you want to see it—get all the little flaws out. Any scratch in your wax is going to show up in your metal like ten-fold. I mean it really shows. You’re going to “sprue” them up, we use the word sprue. It’s basically creating a feed line that goes to your piece. And then we’re going attach it to this button area here. This is a rubber base, and you may not end up doing this part in your studio. There’s a lot of equipment involved. I’m sure you have a local casting company. We actually offer this service here at Creative Side Casting—have them cast into whatever metal you choose. You’re going to take your metal pipe. It’s called a flask, needs to fit right around without anything touching the edges, and then your pieces are levitating in the center there, okay? At that point we’re gonna pour a plaster type material called “investment” into this opening, and it’s going to solidify around your waxes kind of like a plaster of Paris type mold.

Once it’s solidified, we’re going to take this rubber base back off and put it in a kiln, burn it out over about an eight hour burnout cycle. This is the centrifuge, I’m spinning the centrifuge spring so that it’s coiled up, it doesn’t look like it’s really coiled, but trust me it is. From the kiln, you’ll place it into the centrifuge and connect the two. You’ll be melting your metal in this crucible, which is kind of like a little ceramic oven. And once it’s ready to go, you’re going to let the centrifuge go and it’s gonna spin and shoot that metal into your mold. The flask will just dissolve in water, all the investment will fall out—you’ll clean off the investment. Take your gold or silver jewelry, and you’ll saw it off. And finish out any sprue marks, and, of course, polish and sand everything.

How to Make a Wire-Wrapped Pendant

Howcast — Mon, 25 Jul 2011 08:56:51 +0000

Transcript

Today I’m going to show you how to make a wire-wrapped pendant. This is a really simple, fun design that you can use for all sorts of things. You could create a nice pendant with this look, you can make earrings. Just depending on what you want to do, and, really, I’m going to show you some basic techniques, take those, and do your own thing with them, okay? Keep experimenting and coming up with new things.

So what I have today is I have some garnets, and I have a little piece of brass. You can buy these already formed into the shape that you want. This is the pendant that we’re going to create, and we’re just going to wrap these beads right around this center armature. So we need to get a piece of wire. And this is a 26-gauge wire—this is a little bit thin. You need to make sure that your wire is going to fit through that drilled hole. 26-gauge will fit through a lot of these pre-drilled beads that you’ll find out there. We’re going to go ahead and start wrapping around our armature. I’m going to wrap around two times.

You’re going to need some pliers, flat nose, some needle nose, and some round nose pliers. You’re going to need some good snips. We snip that last little piece of wire down, and we’re going to go ahead and feed our first garnet bead onto the wire. You don’t need to have it quite so long, but better to have more than not enough. I have my bead in there, and I’m wrapping around that armature once, and twice. And now you can do that as many times as you like. Two wraps looks nice for this type of pendant. Pull it tight, and you’re going to attach your next bead.

We make all sorts of fun, wire-wrapped projects in our wire-wrapping classes that we offer here at Creative Side Jewelry Academy. This is a classic herringbone weave, and you may have seen it out there, and we show you how to make a bead cap for this type of large stone or smaller stone. So we’re going to continue wrapping those around, all the way around your armature.

Do your own thing, try to be original. Your pendant should look something like this. You can add on a nice little briolette at the bottom if you’d like, and a jump ring at the top to hang your pendant.|

How to Make Gold & Silver Jewelry

Howcast — Thu, 21 Jul 2011 13:03:25 +0000

Transcript

Jewelry Making: How to Make Gold and Silver Jewelry

So, today I’m going to talk to you about one way that I approach making silver and gold jewelry, and that is carving wax. I teach this here at the school. This is one of my favorite ways to create jewelry.

If you are doing rings, you are going to start with a tube of wax. Cut your wax according to size and width that you need. The purple wax is a little bit more flexible. The green wax a little bit more brittle.

Order yourself a little kit. This is a process that takes patience but luckily it’s very fun and relaxing to work with this material.

One thing you are going to need to get to cut designs out of wax is a spiral blade. This is a blade with teeth that go all the way around allowing the wax to simply fall out of the teeth as it cuts.

Start your blade and cut around. Now just cut a wider line so you want to be sure to stay outside that line. These blades are wonderful. You can go in almost any direction with the circular blade. Which is very unlike working with metal. Try to keep your saw frame at a ninety-degree angle.

I love wax because it lends itself to a more sculptural look. You can make really dimensional pieces with it. It’s very neat stuff.

[Picks up a filing tool] This is a really lovely tool. It’s double sided. There is a coarse side and a fine side. Then you can carve down using this tool. I use this tool for a lot of roughing out and then I go back in with a finer tool like dental picks.

A lot of wax carvers will use an Exacto-Knife. Once you’ve created your wax, you’ve got it perfect, exactly the way you want to see it. Get all the little flaws out. Any scratch in your wax is going to show up in your metal. I mean like ten fold. It really shows.

You are going to spume them up. We use the word “spume.” It’s basically creating a feed line that goes to your piece. And then we are going to attach it to this button area here. This is a rubber base. You may not end up doing this part in your studio. There is a lot of equipment involved. I’m sure you have a local casting company. We actually offer this service here. Creative Side Casting. Have them cast into whatever metal you choose.

You are going to take your metal pipe. It’s called a flask. Used to fit right around without anything touching the edges. And then your pieces are levitating in the center there. OK?

At that point we are going to pour a plaster type material called investment into this opening, and it’s going to solidify around your waxes. Kind of like a plaster of Paris type mold. Once it’s solidified we are going to take this rubber base back off and put it in the kiln, burn it out over about an eight hour burn out cycle.

This is the centrifuge. I’m spinning the centrifuge spring so that it is coiled up. It doesn’t look like it is really coiled, but trust me it is. From the kiln, you’ll place it into the centrifuge and connect the two. You’ll be melting your metal in this crucible, which is kind of like a little ceramic oven and once it’s ready to go, you are going to let the centrifuge go and it’s going to spin and shoot that metal into your mold. The flask will just dissolve in water. All the investment would just fall out. You’ll clean off the investment. Take your gold or silver jewelry and you’ll saw it off and finish out any spume marks, and of course polish and sand everything.

How to Solder Jewelry

Howcast — Tue, 19 Jul 2011 15:15:26 +0000

Transcript

Jewelry Making: How to Solder Jewelry

So today I’m going to show you some basics on soldering. This is how you would solder a silver jump ring. What I’m using is a propane and oxygen torch. Propane’s a nice solution, especially for a home studio.

A lot of jewelers, when they solder, use a boric acid slurry. I’m going to dip my piece in there. This is going to create a nice shield around the piece, so when I go to solder, it’s less likely to get contaminated.

I’m going to light my torch. So once you have your gas lit, you’re going to bring in the oxygen really slowly and get kind of what we call a reduced flame. Depending on what you’re soldering depends on how hot you want your torch. We’re just soldering a small piece of silver today, but when you’re soldering silver, you need the whole piece of silver needs to be hot.

So I’m going to go ahead and burn off my boric acid slurry. I’m using a charcoal block here to hold my piece. You don’t want it to be on the tabletop because it’s flammable. And then what we’re going to use is something called flux. Really, without flux, your solder is not going to want to flow. The solder comes in different forms. You can get wire solder, sheet solder. This is a wire solder, this is an easy. There’s probably four different types of solder out there. Easy, there’s a super easy, medium, and a hard.

You want to cut little snippets. This solder goes a long way. I’m going to pick it up with a pick—now this is called pick soldering. I’m going to put a little flux on that solder.

There’s a lot of steps to this. Keep practicing. If you get a chance, take a class somewhere, and let a professional walk you through this. We have a class here called “Soldering 101.” It walks you through all the steps.

I’m heating up my whole silver piece. Some of that solder, it may bubble up and kind of create a paste. That’s going to burn off, don’t worry. You want to get your silver nice and hot. Not so hot as to where it’s going to melt. You don’t want it glowing red, but you do need it pretty close. I’m going to go ahead and put…oh, and it flowed. Did you see that? It should really just be like butter. It should go really, really nice. If it’s not going that quick, something’s not right. Either your metal’s dirty, or the joint is not flush. You want to make sure that that joint is nice, and clean, and smooth, and that things are touching. You want to make sure it flowed all the way through, from back to front.

I’m now going to drop it in something called “pickle.” Leave it in there, it’s in a heated crockpot, and it will basically clean any of the blackening or contamination surface things that have happened from the soldering.

And…that is how your solder jewelry.

Soldering Basics for Jewelry Making

Howcast — Tue, 19 Jul 2011 15:13:49 +0000

Transcript

So today I’m going to talk to you about soldering jewelry. Soldering is a very important technique in jewelry making. We have a number of classes here just on soldering. And if you’re going to be fabricating pieces (and fabrication simply means creating jewelry from the metal), putting on jump rings (which is a good way to attach into a chain), or putting ear backs on, any finding or hardware that you might need on jewelry—a lot of them are going to be attached using this technique of soldering.

So the basic thing of course for soldering and doing hot work is going to be your torch. A lot of folks use matte gas then acetylene, there’s propane, there’s natural gas. Here in the studio at Creative Side, we used propane and oxygen mixed to create our frame. We also teach for those who do not want to solder using tanks in their home studio with creme brulée torch. You can actually do a lot of silver soldering with just a simple creme brulée torch.

Other things you’re going to need—a lot of folks use slurry. And this is boric acid and denatured alcohol mixed together create a protective shield for your metal. Keep in mind that’s denatured alcohol, it’s flammable. But coat your metal with it, then burn it off before you go to solder.

Then you’re going to need a flux, and the flux comes in a liquid, or it comes in a paste. I’ve used both. Paste can be used for silver. A lot of folks that use more gold work will use the liquid flux. You will need to apply that to your joint before you go to solder.

You are also going to need the actual solder, which comes in a sheet, or it comes in a wire form. And so you can cut little pieces—a lot of professionals actually will go in and solder using just holding that wire as a welder wood and introduce the solder by just using it by hand like that.

There’s a ton of different soldering techniques. There’s a lot of ways to approach it. Try out a few, work with a professional if you can, or it will be great if you just give it a go.|

Essential Jewelry Tools

Howcast — Tue, 19 Jul 2011 15:06:14 +0000

Transcript

Jewelry Making: Essential Jewelry Tools

I’m going to show you some essential tools that you are going to need for jewelry making. Most of these tools, you are going to use in the fabrication process and they will be used to work directly with the metal, directly with sheet, wire, tubing. Rio Grand in Albuquerque New Mexico is a great resource.

This is one of the kits that Rio Grande offers, and it comes with a number of tools that are really essential to the jewelry making trade. You’ve got some nips, you’ve got your pliers, and you’ve got flat nose, round nose. Three major hammers that you are going to need. A rawhide, a plastic mallet, a chasing hammer for hitting steel tools and chasing reposé work.

You have a bench pin for working your material on. This comes with a table clamp that you can actually clamp right on to your table. Any work surface will work with this. This is what is nice about it. You can clamp it right on to any table. It might mark up your wood. So, put any something in between maybe to protect it. This comes with a ring clamp, so you can actually clamp your jewelry in here and work it with your files. This is a great tool!

We also have a pin vice for holding other small tools, prongs and things like that when you are setting. Bur Life, so, when you get your flex shaft working down the road you can use these to lubricate your burs. This also comes with a ring mandrel. Basically you use it to hammer material around then you can size rings up.

You have tweezers here. Different things to hold small objects with. Especially when you get into soldering, these things are really essential.

We also have some measuring tools that are included in this kit. Some dividers, a caliper gauge, the millimeter gauge that you are going to need for measuring things. Ring sizing, if you are making something for someone, you need to get a proper ring size. You are going to need that tool as well. And you have some bezel pushers here so that when you get into stone setting you can use these.

And of course Tim McCreight’s Complete Metalsmith, which is an excellent book. We recommend this to all of our students here at Creative Side. And you can learn quite a little bit from just that handbook.

How to Make Metal Jewelry

Howcast — Tue, 19 Jul 2011 15:05:03 +0000

Transcript

Today I’m going to talk to you about making metal jewelry. It’s a natural next step for bead stringing and wire wrapping, taking it to a metalsmithing level, working in brass or copper, or even silver once you get better. We start our students off here at Creative Side with copper and brass, unless we are soldering, where we allow you to go ahead and use silver. Silver will solder a little bit easier, copper is lovely though, it contains beautiful color, it’s extremely malleable and really fun to learn on too. And then you can also work in brass, which is a lovely contrasting color to copper, and you can overlap two metals together to create a beautiful two-tone look. And then once you get really good, you can do the same thing with silver and gold. More and more people are working with all types of metal aluminum, titanium, even iron. Play around with it see what you like, see what looks good to you, see what’s most fun to work with, and go from there.

What Is Jewelry-Making Hardware?

Howcast — Tue, 19 Jul 2011 14:58:54 +0000

Transcript

I’m going to talk to you about jewelry making hardware. In the jewelry world, we’ll use the word “findings,” a lot. You can use different findings to hang your necklaces, to hang your pendants, to connect your bracelets as well.

A common finding is the jump ring. A jump ring is…for the chain to jump to the clasp, we’ll put a jump ring in there. It is best to go ahead and secure that jump ring by soldering it.

Another common finding or piece of hardware for jewelry is the “clasp.” This is an “S” hook. This is one that you can see has already been put on. Tons of findings out there, you can look on RioGrande.com—they’ve got a huge selection of jewelry making findings.

This is a “lobster clasp.” You can find a lot of re-manufactured findings such as this, or you can make custom findings.

We also have a class called, “Fascinating Findings‚” where you come in, and you learn how to make this hardware yourself. It flows more with the piece, creates a nicer look, I think, and you can take your work to that next level—to the hiring level. You want to consider hand-making those clasps and hand-making those findings, so that it really brings the piece together. There’s a ton out there, so start looking around and find what fits your pieces the best.

How to Attach Jewelry Pieces without Soldering

Howcast — Tue, 19 Jul 2011 14:57:42 +0000

Transcript

Jewelry Making: Attaching Jewelry Pieces without Soldering

In jewelry making, there’s a lot of ways to attach your metals together. You can work hot, using a torch and soldering the pieces together, or you can work with cold connections. I’m going to talk to you today about creating those cold connections, different types of cold connections that you can use to combine metals, as well as found objects and Plexiglas. A lot of found objects and thinner metals cannot be heated, so you absolutely need to learn about cold connections. A lot of jewelers don’t really even use a torch – they simply use these cold connections to create beautiful jewelry.

What I’m going to talk to you about right now is what we call a rivet. A wire rivet is simply a piece of wire that’s been fed through and cut off about a millimeter on each side and then hammered on each side of the metal to secure those two pieces together. This one’s been riveted all the way around. We have a wonderful class here called “Cold Connections: Jewelry without a Torch” is what we call it. This is another type of rivet. It’s an open rivet or a tube rivet. This piece will not come apart, it has been hammered on each side, so it’s secure, it’s solid, and it’s a great way to put jewelry together.

How to Cast Jewelry

Howcast — Tue, 19 Jul 2011 14:56:35 +0000

Transcript

Today I’m going to talk to you about jewelry casting. This is a really fun technique used in jewelry making to produce beautiful, beautiful pieces. What you do is you carve a piece from carving wax. It comes in purple, it comes in blue, it comes in green, and they’re actually making wax now that’s actually gold-toned or silver-toned so you can show your client exactly what it’s going to look like in the wax. This is how I show my clients my wedding jewelry that I create, so they actually get to see the stones in place, they get to see everything before it’s made.

You’re actually going to take it and put it on a rubber base. Either you do this in your own studio, if you have a casting set-up. If not, you can send it to a casting company and source that work out.

And you’re going to take a flask, it’s basically a metal pipe, and you’re going to place it around that wax. Then you’re going to pour a plaster-type material called “investment.” It’s what’s going to create your mold. So we’ll put that in the kiln, and you’ll have an opening where your wax gets burnt out. And actually, it’s called lost wax because you lose the wax, it burns away, and then you pour molten metal, either by a vacuum or by a centrifugal casting machine. That’s what I teach here at Creative Side Jewelry Academy—how to shoot molten metal into that flask and create your cast piece.

How to Find Wholesale Jewelry Making Supplies

Howcast — Mon, 18 Jul 2011 14:32:51 +0000

Transcript

Ok, I’m going to tell you guys about where to find wholesale jewelry-making supply companies. There’s a ton out there. You can find a lot of them online. Try them out. You can give them a call, see who you want to work with. A lot of places now do not require tax ID, which is really exciting. It used to be, you needed to be in the jewelry trade to get jewelry-making supplies. You can actually call up and set up an account a little bit easier these days. So you can start gathering some of the essential things that you need from these wholesale jewelry supplies. If you are gonna do a lot of ordering, a lot of supplies and tools that you need. You definitely want to go ahead and get your DVA and probably a tax ID. And a lot more companies will be willing to work with you if they see that you are in business, and you are legitimately using the materials to create pieces to resell.

A lot of places don’t have a local jewelry supply place, so its tough to buy goods hands-on. You need to maybe go to one of the large jewelry shows that happen. There’s a big show in Tucson every year. The Annual International Gem and Jewelry Show that travels around and hits a lot of the US. You can find them on intergem.com, and find out about their next show, and hopefully it’ll be near you. You can go buy direct from the wholesale market. But again, you will need you DVA, you will need the tax id to go into the wholesale area. You can buy retail, no problem, but they do want you to have a tax ID for that. We order a lot of our supplies from a company called Rio Grande. You can find them online at riogrande.com. They’re very friendly, you could call them up and ask about the materials that you need, ask the best way to order them, as well as set up an account with them.

So, good luck with finding your whole sale supplies and good luck with making jewelry.

Essential Jewelry-Making Supplies

Howcast — Mon, 18 Jul 2011 10:23:23 +0000

Transcript

There’s lots of supplies out there that you can start gathering to make fabulous jewelry. A sheet—it comes in all thicknesses, all gauges. Usually if you’re buying copper or brass, it’ll come about this size. And then you can cut it down to what you need, saw out your designs depending on what you’re trying to create.

There’s different tubing and wire stock out there that you can purchase, different diameters, different thicknesses, different wall thicknesses, a lot of people using tubing to set stones in. There’s a number of other supplies that you can buy that are pre-cut, such as these disks. They are already cut into nice little circles, so you can create findings, or little decorations for your beaded work. You can drill holes and put jumper rings and make little pendants.

Different wire diameters out there, and this is a 16 gauge wire, and you can use that to create clasps or findings. You determine most widths by millimeter gauge.

Now if you’re working in wax, you want to consider different wax material that’s out there. Usually, it comes in sheets like this, and you can cut your design from this, or uh, a lot of people do cad, and they use this type of material to cut your designs out of. It also comes in ring stock, as well as sheet wax that you can bend and form and fabricate with to set up for casting.

Start gathering a few materials is my suggestion, and just start experimenting.

How to Get Started Making Jewelry

Howcast — Mon, 18 Jul 2011 10:10:40 +0000

Transcript

Jewelry Making: Getting Started

My name is Courtney Gray, and I’m going to talk to you about getting started in jewelry making. The first thing you’re going to need is some jewelry designs, so start sketching. When you set up at home, think about that. What do I need, what do I want to create? Am I working in metal, am I working in wax, am I working with beads or wire wrapping?

After you have designs, you can worry about tools and where you’re going to work. You’re going to need a nice space to work; you do not need a jeweler’s bench. Start at your kitchen table. When I got started, I was in my garage here in Texas, but I found that from necessity, I figured out what exactly I needed for that process.

You’re going to need to get a bench pin, and that is a little piece of wood that’s been shaped into something like this and you can clamp that down to any surface. This gives you a nice solid surface to push your metal against as you work it. It also helps control sawing, so a lot of times jewelers will cut a grove in here so when you’re sawing, your saw blade has somewhere to go. This kit that I’m showing you here from Rio Grande, one of the top supply companies in the country, comes with this table clamp. So, this will actually clamp to any surface and you can use it really anywhere. As you go along you’re going to discover what you need, so don’t feel like you need a whole bunch of things to start, you can get started right away.

Top 7 Jewelry-Making Techniques

Howcast — Mon, 18 Jul 2011 10:08:21 +0000

Transcript

Today, I’m going to talk to you about some top techniques of the jewelry making trade. There’s so many techniques in this industry. I mean, it is endless. We come up with new classes here every semester because of that fact. I’m going to show you a few of the top techniques that we teach here at Creative Side Jewelry Academy.

One of those is just simply sawing work out and creating beautiful pieces like this. It’s very simple. You just need a couple of tools, some sheet, and you need a saw. And you can actually create beautiful work like this. So, learning how to use the jeweler saw. And then we have riveted pieces here. Also, great ways to use textured work in your jewelry and make beautiful combinations and looks like this. Riveting your work, just creating a cold connection. No torch needed. You do not need a torch to do this kind-of work.

Soldering your work together and putting things together using heat. So we call that, “hot work”—another top technique of the jewelry-making trade. And once you learn how to use that torch, you can actually combine pieces and overlap pieces—we call it “Appliqué”: putting pieces on top of another piece. And then eventually learn bezel setting and ways to put stones onto your work and create beautiful color.

Fold-forming and forging, so your learning how to hammer metal and make it do what you want it to do using simple bends in the metal to create earrings or necklaces, beautiful formed bracelets.

Another top technique I would mention is precious metal clay. So, your actually forming and building these pieces in clay and then when you take that clay and fire it in a kiln, you actually burn off organic binder, and you receive 99.9% fine silver from that burn off. So, your piece ends up turning into metal. It’s like magic.

We teach all these things here at Creative Side Jewelry Academy, and I hope you’ll come and check ’em out, and let us show you how to use these top techniques in your jewelry and create beautiful things.

How to Sell Handmade Jewelry

Howcast — Mon, 18 Jul 2011 09:27:06 +0000

Transcript

Courtney Gray On How to Sell Handmade Jewelry

So now that you’ve made your beautiful handmade collection of jewelry, and you’re ready to take it to market, I’m going to give you some ideas on how to get that out there, how to get it on people, and get people wearing your work. The best way to start I think, and you may have already discovered, is friends and family. Get those pieces on your friends and family. Don’t give it away; let them pay you something for your work. You at least need to cover your materials when you’re starting up. Now there’s a number of artists’ markets out there; you can create a nice booth space, create a nice atmosphere for people to come and shop, and then you’re there, behind the booth to represent your work. Getting into some galleries is a great idea. There’s probably local shops where you are, and if not, you can start looking around as well for shops that fit your niche: what you’re creating, the style that you’re representing. And maybe send them a proposal and try to get them to pick you up and carry some of your work wholesale.

Also, you can try online; there’s Etsy, Facebook, creating a store, getting people to like you and to make comments and post photos of your jewelry. Get it out there as much as you can; talk it up. It’s a full-time thing trying to get a business going, especially in the beginning until you establish a clientele and have them coming back to you for more. Treat your clients really well. Though they will come back, they’ll collect your pieces, those people actually become your walking advertising. You have to market yourself to these people, not just showing them the jewelry but showing them a piece of yourself. It shines through your work, and people really love that and they’ll wear it and cherish it for years to come.

How to Pick a Jewelry-Making Kit

Howcast — Mon, 18 Jul 2011 09:19:16 +0000

Transcript

I’m going to talk to you today about how to choose a jewelry making kit. Now this all depends on what you’re trying to do, ok. What kind of process? What kind of technique you’re going to use in jewelry making?

This particular kit I have out in front of me is a kit from Rio Grande—you can find out more about their kits online at RioGrande.com. They have a lot of different kits out there for different techniques. This one is kind of a basic set up for metal smithing and fabrication work. Now if you’re doing wax carving and wax work in more casting, you want to think about maybe getting a casting kit—something that has wax bars, wax files. All of those tools should be kept separate from your metals, so you do want separate tools for that. Beading work or simple wire-wrapping work: there are definitely kits out there for that as well. They’ll come with just simple pliers and some small tools that you might need for wire wrapping.|

Handmade Jewelry Gift Ideas

Howcast — Mon, 18 Jul 2011 08:38:44 +0000

Transcript

Today I’m going to talk to you about some fun gift ideas in jewelry making. There’s a ton of great items out there on the market. This is a beautiful piece of resin jewelry. You can take pre-made bezels like this. Take a nice image of the photo or a momento, and you can put that behind the resin. You pour the resin in, and it sets up kind of like an epoxy. We teach that here at Creative Side, how to work with resin, but it’s something that you can do at home as well. It may take some trial and error, so you may not want to use that piece of momento right away.

There’s color resins out there that you can use, beaded necklaces are always a lovely gift idea, as well as wire-wrapped pendants, wire-wrapped earrings. Getting a custom piece made is a great solution to a gift idea. Incorporate birthstones or gem stones that might be personal to that person. You can absolutely come up with a custom piece for someone. Sketch it out and depending on what your gift idea is, we’re absolutely available to help you bring that to life.

How to Use Textured Metal in Jewelry Making

Howcast — Mon, 18 Jul 2011 08:33:42 +0000

Transcript

Jewelry Making Using Textured Metal

Today I’m going to tell you about textured metal and how you can incorporate that into your work. There’s a number of ways to get texture on your metal, you can use hammers, you can use a rolling mill with a material that’s going to texture that metal. You can actually take fabrics, and press that into your metal, and make it mimic that fabric pattern. Once you add all those elements in, you want to think about maybe layering those textures. A good rule of thumb is three different textures overlapping each other. Here’s some examples. This has a very light texture on it, a brass, and then a heavier hammer texture around the edges. Play with these different textures and see what kind of look that you like. Precious metal clay lends itself more to texture as well. You can actually use stamping tools to create texture in thin metal and in precious metal clay. Precious metal clay, there’s a ton of different ways to get texture on your piece and really quick, fun ways as well. Hammering is one of the oldest techniques of getting texture, and just using different pressures with the hammer, different types of hammer heads. So, experiment with this. You can actually take texture and pull it into your pieces and creative really beautiful looks in your work.

How to Use Flex Shaft Jewelry-Making Tools

Howcast — Tue, 05 Jul 2011 09:40:54 +0000

Transcript

I’m going to show you guys how to use your flex shaft tools today. Once you get into jewelry making, it’s a very important tool. We find it really really essential for finishing out jewelry, drilling holes, all sorts of things that you can use this tool for. It is a foot-operated piece of equipment. You have a motor, you have a hand piece and then you have a foot pedal that actually controls that motor. A lot of flex shafts will go in a forward or reverse depending in what you are trying to do. A lot of stone setters or gem setters find that very helpful.

What I am going to show you is how to load your burs and bits into the flex shaft. It comes with a toggle just like you would use with a drill. It has a toggle key to open up that chuck inside. And you want to place your bit in there accordingly. So depending on the thickness of the mandrill of your tool, you’ll need to open that up.

I’m going to show you how to use a cut-off wheel. This is a really powerful tool, so I’m going to put on my safety glasses. So what I’m going to show you is if you have some rough spots on a piece of jewelry, whether it is cast or fabricated, this is an excellent tool to use to rough down some of these things. Flue them out, removing heavy scratches. Always start with your heaviest tool and then work your way to your finer tools. You can work down to sandpaper at this point or whatever you choose. So you can work your way down, depending on whether you have scratches on the top, you can do the top. As you see here, I always have my pointer finger propped on my bench pad while I’m holding the flex shaft tool.

So there’s a ton of tools. If you start looking in catalogues or online. There are silicon wheels, this is an excellent tool, a very professional tool. There are pink ones here. If you are polishing around a gemstone, you don’t want to mar that gemstone. I have a little scroll on this piece of jewelry, and I’m going to take a tiny little ball bur and very slowly, see how that bur wants to jump out of there. You have to really show it to stay where you need it.

So tons of different shapes out there. There is a inverted cone burs, there’s burs for cutting wax, there’s a particular bur you want to get for cutting different types of wax.

Steel brush, I’ll show you how to use that. There’s kind of an antique look on your metal. This is a very nice tool. Look what it does. I’m not really finished out on this piece. But you see the effect it has on the metal.

A lot of jewelers find after time and after you getting a little more involved with jewelry making that you want to have a nice flex shaft that you can control, the speed of. It becomes really important to have that high polish professional look on your jewelry.

How to Cut Designs in Metal for Handmade Jewelry

Howcast — Tue, 05 Jul 2011 09:25:14 +0000

Transcript

Today I’m going to show you how to cut out designs in metal. And these pieces can be used for jewelry-making, or they can be used as decorative ornaments, gift-giving ideas, anything that you would like.

The first thing you need to do is pick out a saw blade that’s appropriate to the metal that you’re going to be sawing. Usually a good way to judge what size saw blade you need is to measure the thickness of the metal up to the teeth. You want to have three teeth per thickness of metal. So, if this is an eighteen gauge piece of copper that we’re going to be cutting today, and I’m going to line it up and make sure that three teeth are touching that metal on width.

So when you load your saw blade, you absolutely need to have your teeth facing down toward the handle and out. You’re gonna be sawing the metal in this direction, so you need to have those teeth facing the right way.

So first thing I’m gonna show you is how to load this blade. I always use my hip as kind of a third arm. We’re gonna load it in the top, clamp first, and clamp that down tightly. From that point, you want to take some wax and lubricate your blade. Now keep in mind that every jeweler does this differently, and I’m just showing you my way of approaching this one technique. So, from there, you want to take your metal, we’re going to cut this heart out of copper, this eighteen gauge copper.

So the first thing we want to do is we want to take a drill bit, and we want to create an opening in the metal, and I’m gonna use my flexible shaft tool here. This is a foot-operated tool. Insert our drill bit into the eye. I’m gonna take my metal and I’m gonna create my hole where we can feed that saw blade through. I’m putting kind of a medium pressure on the metal. And, we’re through.

So I have my saw blade here, to feed the work through where the top surface is facing up so that when I saw, I can see. We’re going to go ahead and start our sawing now. I’m going to work my way around. Always keep your blade moving while sawing. Once you get your piece cut, you’re going to need to remove the blade. You can then file and clean up those edges. Start with the really heavy file and then work your way to the finer tools. That’s really important. Its gonna save you a lot of grunt work. Ok, work your way around and get that as clean as you can.

And that is how you saw out a piece for jewelry.

How to Make Jewelry with Courtney Gray

Howcast — Thu, 30 Jun 2011 11:48:40 +0000

Transcript

My name is Courtney Gray, and I’m going to tell you a little bit about how I got started in the jewelry world.

I started making masks out of found objects. I ended up in Germany working with the HandWerksKammer in Koblenz and studied welding technology there. Came back from Europe, [and] a lot of my friends had already come here, so I decided Austin’s a great place.

I ended up in a jewelry shop casting gold and silver. Loved it, fell in love with it, and now I actually am here at my own school teaching that to other folks.

I started my school here—Creative Side jewelry Academy—four years ago I’m here in Austin, online at creativeside.org. And we teach workshops and classes. We also rent studio space. You need somewhere to solder, somewhere with ventilation, somewhere with all the tools right at your fingertips, this is the place for you here in Austin in central Texas.

Give me a shout when you come to town. So we have 25 classes a semester, all year round. Create that masterpiece. And I’m gonna tell you about jewelry-making today.|