Lillian Jones

I’ve returned to the bench after a hiatus, and need to sharpen my skills in granulation.  As I love English history, and all things Game of Thrones, I will make a simplified Anglo Saxon Disk pendant.

I start with a fine silver disk, size 1 and 1/8 inch, or about 29 mm.  The thickness of my silver disk is 24 ga, which is what I have on hand.   The project would be  to be 22 ga. or 20 ga, which would be less inclined to melt, but I am in the mood to make it work.

Since it will be a cross, I scribe two perpendicular lines and hope they will survive all the heating.

Next I fuse a 14 ga. fine silver wire to form a border.

Here I am using Bluefuse and fusing the edge to the disk. I also add another ring.

Here I can easily place the little fine silver balls in place between the two rings, using Bluefuse to hold them when it dries.

I am heating my silver with an acetylene/air torch on a tripod, and using a water chestnut can with a hole in it to make it dark enough.  Otherwise I would have to cut off all the lights, because Darkness is the secret to this technique, and knowing the right incantation.

Next I shape four curliques to make the cross, and that is my knee.

So far so good.  This is where the scribed lines come in handy, as I arrange the cross bits, with more Bluefuse and let it dry.

I need circles for the next addition of design elements, so I wrap a steel rod the right size, and cut them into rings and fuse them.

Now heat as before, in this case from below with a soft flame on a tripod, and add more fine silver balls.

I don’t know what I did to this picture, but it gets the point across.

More little balls, more Bluefuse, fire again.  I have a post on how I make all these balls the easy way, using the Sandkuhler splash and a non-stick pan.  If you want to try granulation, this is key, because making all these sizes is otherwise not really practical.  I’ll put a link here, that has more information. http://www.bluefuseforsilver.com

This is the final fused piece, darkened with Liver of Sulfer

It looks as though it was worn into battle by Beorn.

My Etsy Page, for Bluefuse and Jewelry.

I use alcohol instead of water to help the grains of glass stick, as it evaporates away fast and there is less chance of it muddying the clarity. It is best to use a thin coating, like snow in North Carolina.

And heat it. I use an ultra-lite kiln, good only for a few things, but I like it for what I do. You can also just use a torch, it works fine, just heat it from below. I have other posts on torch-firing, if that is your interest.

And there it is, cooling on a steel block, which sucks the heat right off. There are some other projects waiting for some attention.

OK. So this is the commission: match the tattoo. On the surface, this would appear to be fairly similar to the designs I already do, but once I start really looking at the design, I realize I’ll have to use some technology to make a replica, or get even close.

So I fire up the old Mac, with the ancient copy of photoshop, and pull out the lines from the photo. I always make a sheet of various sizes of the image, because I am measurement challenged, and can’t envision the exact size without looking at it on paper.

The outer line I will draw with enamel, rather than using a wire. I think this will be closer to the tattoo.

Here I am using a sharpie to put some guidelines on the base. The sharpie will burn away when I fire on the wires.

I use the drawing to work over and golly, this was a whole lot harder than I thought…so after a struggle,

I think I have what I was looking for.

I want to make a triskele pendant, and have lately been interested in the surface that is under the enamel.

For my first step I am going to create a new texture plate for this particular design.

I’ll start with some heavy brass sheet. This is about 14 gauge, and I’ll cut a square that is 2 x 2 inches.

I had a cool idea about how to get the kind of image I wanted, so for this I find the center, tap a dent and drill a little hole.

Next I forge a curvy wire and drill another little hole with the same size bit.

Using the drill bit as a pin, I am able to rotate the curve all around the sheet. It is a little squirrelly but looks interesting.

Since I need to etch the brass, I first cover it with clear packing tape, and then I cut the lines using a sharp blade and the brass wire as a guide. It looks larger in these images than it is, and this was painstaking.

Here it is with all the tape cut and peeled away.  I’ll electro-etch away the surface of the exposed brass.I like the way the hand drawn curves multiply, both mathematical and natural at the same time.

Below I’ve taped some coated copper wire to the back of the piece, and I hope to establish a connection
along the bottom edge to make a circuit in the etching bath.  This turns out to not work very well, so if any of you have a better method, feel free to comment.

Here is my etching rig: a salt water bath with a copper anode and a motorcycle battery.  It is pretty simple and not as messy as ferric chloride, but a lot more fiddly.  So far I have not shocked myself with it.

So here is the final plate.  I’ll be interested to see how it prints the silver, which will be the next chapter of this project.

I like it.  It reminds me of these.