Year of Jewelry 2008 has started ,yeah! This weeks topic is "I can do it"... which is a great way to start the year!!! Here are 2 wedding knot bracelets, from a recent bead and button issue. Why are they " I can do it" ?? because I made the rings myself!!!! As a Christmas present to the business, I bought a Koil cutter and a dremel, and these bracelet are from my first batches!! I wound and cut the copper first, on the theory of if I mess up the wire, it's only copper. Then I made the sterling rings for another wedding knot bracelet. I also made up enough rings to make a Byzantine bracelet, shown below. I tumbled the rings in my tumbler for about 3 hours. Really, if you plan to make chainmaile without doing nothing but chainmaile, I cannot recommend the Koil Kutter enough! It took about 45 minutes to coil and cut for the 3 bracelets, and I have left over rings of course. Next time it wont take near that long, I had to figure out how to un-chuck the dremel and attach the cutting gizmo, a 1 time lesson I"m sure. There is another system out there, called the jump ringer, which is geared for more production work. It's also 2 or more times the money. I'm very happy with the Koil Kutter!
Anyway, this weeks theme will be my personal theme for the year. Starting in late January I"m taking a class on silver smithing, I'm very excited about that! This is going to be such a fun year!!!
No comments:
Post a Comment