I had a student today, who wanted to fabricate 2 bangle bracelets from a sheet of 20 ga. sterling she had. The piece of sterling she had, although somewhat cut into in a few spots, was about 6 in. x 12 in.<\/p>\n
She had the metal already, and it represented the thickness she wanted the bracelets to be, and she wanted my help.\u00a0 It looked like she was going to do a lot of hand filing and sawing, and that we were going to need a very deep throated saw frame.<\/p>\n
I explained that if she had other scrap silver, or pure silver she could alloy to a cleaner S88 sterling, she could have torch melted and poured a narrow flat ingot, and could have rolled out the same thickness of metal, with perfectly straight sides, with no sawing or filing, in much less time.<\/p>\n
To her mind, the flat sheet of 20 ga. metal seemed closer to her goal, and we both agreed it would be a shame to melt down the sterling sheet, so she proceeded to lay out her flat edge, file it flat, and layout her bracelet cuts.\u00a0 She has a lot of work ahead of her, and will most likely be looking for a deeper throated sawframe than the 6 in. model I have.\u00a0 She didn’t want to take my advise on pouring her own ingot.<\/p>\n
I know that to many, making an ingot and rolling it into what they want with a rolling mill seems daunting, physically demanding, and time consuming, the reality is not nearly that.\u00a0 I’m pretty certain that if\u00a0 we had a contest, she sawing and filing that 20 ga. sheet into\u00a0two\u00a0 8 1\/4 in. strips with smooth edges, and me making mine with a rolling mill, I’d have finished much quicker.<\/p>\n
It also seems to me that my milled strips could have been made from a much better sterling, have been roller printed with a texture, or the edges thickened (upset) or any number of things I had wanted to incorporate into my strips.<\/p>\n
My teaching philosophy is that one should, ideally, be able to start with a flat design on paper,\u00a0 design the elements of the proposed 3-D finished piece, and make each element fit the original design.\u00a0 If you are starting with ready-made elements, you are likely making your design fit what elements (stock) you already have.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I had a student today, who wanted to fabricate 2 bangle bracelets from a sheet of 20 ga. sterling she had. The piece of sterling she had, although somewhat cut into in a few spots, was about 6 in. x 12 in. She had the metal already, and it represented the thickness she wanted the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":138,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","template":"","meta":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/userblogs.ganoksin.com\/jaywhaley\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/17"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/userblogs.ganoksin.com\/jaywhaley\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/userblogs.ganoksin.com\/jaywhaley\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/userblogs.ganoksin.com\/jaywhaley\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/138"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/userblogs.ganoksin.com\/jaywhaley\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/userblogs.ganoksin.com\/jaywhaley\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/17\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":39,"href":"https:\/\/userblogs.ganoksin.com\/jaywhaley\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/17\/revisions\/39"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/userblogs.ganoksin.com\/jaywhaley\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}