ScrapHappy – October 2021

There’s quite a bit of experimentation that goes on in my workshop. Sometimes it’s because I want to play, sometimes it’s because I’ve got a new tool, but mostly it’s because I need to learn or practice a new technique

I’ve a commission ongoing where my customer requested a textured bezel. The bezel (as I’m sure you know) is the wall of metal that holds the stone in place. There are lots of different ways to create texture on metal, from running it through a mill with something patterned, to heating it and reticulating it, to beating texture in – either by laying it on something with an interesting texture, or using the hammer / punch to impart the texture.

With a bezel, there’s the fragility of the stone to factor in, and as I’ve not created textured bezels before (my customer knows this!), I tried two different techniques, both of which created very small bits of scrap silver

Here’s what I did with one of the small pieces.

I’d begun with a strip of fine (99.9) silver that was 1mm in thickness and 6mm in width.

By the time I had rolled it down to 0.8mm and hammered in the texture it was 20 mm longer than it began and 15mm longer than I needed

Not long enough for a pendant, but ideal for some delicate studs

I had some gold leaf scraps from my keum-boo* projects, so I took those and applied them to the textured surface of the rectangle of metal

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Gold leaf comes in a small sheet and every scrap has to be utilised

Then I used the mitre vise to square up the ends and verniers to measure the width to mark out where I needed to divide (using a saw and file) to create a pair of squares.

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I soldered some stud posts to the back with ‘easy’ solder (the solder with the lowest temperature melting point**) flipping the studs over whilst still hot and rubbing the gold back on to ensure the bond between the pure metals was secure

Finally, I pickled them and popped them into my little mitre vise to beat in some more texture and give them a very slight dome before dropping them in Betty-The-Barrel for a tumble and polish

Here they are – a birthday gift – with the two test bezels. A gorgeous purple flash labradorite and a not so gorgeous amazonite from my practice stash of stones I’d picked up right back at the beginning of my silversmithing journey when I expected to damage more than I successfully set

**lowest melting point of ‘assay quality silver solder’ – there are solders with lower melting points but they have a lower proportion of silver so I don’t like to use them in jewellery

*Video of the keum-boo process here over on my v v unprofessional YouTube channel, an earlier post explaining the process here