What I did this week March 3-9

In a way to force myself to update here more often, I thought I would start a weekly post that mentions the jewelry-related things I did every week. I'll aim for Saturday or Sunday and let you know what I've been up to at my jewelry desk.

This week I made about a bazillion stacking rings for Etsy orders: fine silver, thin hammered sterling rings, infinity rings, and mixed metal stacking rings. I like making stacking rings, especially the hammered ones; they are pretty fast to make and involve whacking things with a hammer. I find making them soothing.

I made myself a pair of sterling silver stud earrings. I'm not sure if I am going to make and list another set yet. I don't know if people would want to buy them.

I have also been struggling with making a sun shaped copper bezel set pendant for the last few days. My MicroTorch is just not cutting it for making larger pieces out of copper sheet metal. It doesn't have the power to heat the metal fast enough to flow the solder before everything oxidizes. I finally cut an oval out of the backing, and that finally made it so that I could get the solder to flow. Of course, by then I had added a little too much solder and when it flowed, it flowed everywhere. I will now be spending the next week sanding all of this silver solder off...

Finally, yesterday I splurged and bought a few new tools: a dapping block set and a circle punch cutter. The circle cutter is great because I can't cut a consistently curved line with a saw to save my life - a couple whacks with a hammer and this gets me uniform circles in lots of sizes. And the dapping block set was a steal; I got it from Harbor Freight and I've seen the exact same set at Rio Grande for double the price.

Here's what I made with my new toys:

So what's on tap for next week? Hopefully some more custom orders for Etsy. Finishing the sun pendant; I still have to figure out what kind of bail I want on it and what kind of chain to hang it from (I'm leaning toward viking knit). And I want to try to make a flower out of sheet metal and attach it to a ring, but I'm still working out in my head exactly how...