Wednesday 8 September 2010

Looking for a catalogue of ring blanks


Many years ago, while living in a very small fishing village in the north of Peru, I commissioned a local goldsmith to make a ring in 18k gold to a specific design. He worked with the most primitive of tools but made a beautiful ring nontheless. This was long before I began learning to be a metalsmith, but I remember being impressed by the design blank that he used to make the ring. His dog-eared old catalogue had many ring designs to choose from, and in the index were several pages with the design blanks corresponding to those designs, each with options for a variety of ring sizes. He merely traced the ring blank design onto the metal, pierced it out and then bent and soldered the ring.
I have tried to approximate the design blank in the attached pdf image file. I would appreciate very much if anybody could tell me where I might get such a catalogue, or collection of ring blank designs such as these.

Monday 28 June 2010

A big thank you to those who watched and commented on the Silver chain making videos. My next post, I hope will be the laying out and construction of a black coral/ sterling silver men's ring. As always , please bear with my embryonic film making skills.

Friday 18 June 2010

Making a Sterling Silver chain 3 (final)


Final chapter in the series. Apologies for the poor quality filmaking, I promise to be better prepared if I post another "how to" series. Maybe a music soundtrack or something. Any comments , critiques very welcome

Making a Sterling Silver chain part 2


Part two, the soldering of the jump rings. Hope its not too boring , I personally find it very therapeutic.

Second attempt at posting video


Part one of a series of videos showing how to construct a simple hand-made sterling silver chain. Excuse the video quality,especially the echo at the end, its something that I'm working on....

Sunday 6 June 2010

Spent half of Thursday and all of Friday traveling to Caracas to attend an interview at the US Embassy, only to be told that we still have a cartload of paperwork to fill out, a medical exam to schedule and Police reports from every country I have ever lived in (11 in all), before they can proceed with the visa process..... ya gotta love it.

Making a sterling silver chain video 1