Guide to really essential silversmithing tools - Part 1: Basic

When I first decided I wanted to start silversmithing after attending - and loving - my first lesson, it was a natural progression to look at what tools I should buy so I could continue doing it as a hobby at home. When I looked into the tools that were available, I was immediately lost in a sea of hundreds of unfamiliar names and types, with very little help to navigate which ones were ‘must-haves’ and which were only ‘nice-to-haves’. At the time I had one book – this one by Jinks McGrath which has EIGHT pages of ‘essential’ tools – and did a bit of browsing forums and blogs, before dipping my toe in that sea.

I made a string of purchases and naturally found that some tools are amazing and are constantly used, and some I found I really didn’t need that much. I had to wait for probably my third order from Cooksons (after about 2 months) before I felt I was really able to complete a piece of simple jewellery. Obviously, it depends what exactly you want to do and make, because each new technique invariably needs a (or several) new tool.

By no means do I have the fullest workbench or the most tools, but I think I’m at a stage where I’m fairly comfortable with the tools I do have… and this has prompted me to write a simple guide to the really, really essential tools for a silversmith.

Basic – what to buy in your very first order:

The following will give you all the tools needed to make simple items to start with, like pendants, charms, etc. Roughly, the below will cost around £160-175, including VAT.

1. Workbench – unfortunately, without this one thing, there’s not a lot you can do at home. I use a £30 pine desk table from Ikea, which lives in my spare room and works great (better pictures in my workbench post here)

2. Bench peg (preferable one with anvil) – your staple surface for cutting metal (not pictured)

For cutting / shaping:

3. Piercing saw - probably your most useful tool, allowing you to cut metal

4. Saw blades 2/0 - good all-round blade, I have had no problems using these for a variety of thicknesses, but the rule is 'at least 3 saw teeth to the thickness of the metal'

5. Nylon (or rawhide) hammer / mallet – for hammering and shaping metal without marking the surface like a metal hammer will.

Read more after the jump...

Overthinking the whole packaging thing... plus pink topaz

I have spent about three weeks looking at different options for jewellery boxes and packaging... and I'm completely stuck. I've worked out that ideally, I need boxes which:
- are pretty, modern, and a nice colour
- can be printed on the outside with my logo
- don't have a ridiculous minimum order number
- do not cost £££

So... not an overly demanding list of requirements, right? But perhaps I am too fussy - what I really don't want are cheap cardboard boxes. My ideal box is something elegant and pretty like this:

...but unfortunately I would need to order 1000 minimum in each size. Ah. Perhaps not then.

So, I've finally whittled down the suppliers to just two options, and I think I've made my mind up at last (in the absence of anything better!): I think I will go for these boxes from Potters instead of these from Finer Packaging because a) Finer can't print on the outside of the lid, only inside; b) their minimum order for printing is 100 per size.



Any other packaging suppliers I should check out? Am I making the right choice?

In other news, I made this modern pink topaz ring on the weekend. It has a high bezel made from 0.5mm sheet, and a hammered band.

The hammered band...

Fits me well... perhaps I should keep this for me?

Cufflinks

I've been making lots of cufflinks lately. My friend owns a shop in Woodstock, Oxfordshire - The Cotswold Tailor, and so I've come up with a few solid silver cufflink designs to create samples for the shop. He also owns a tailoring company, so I thought personalised monogrammed cufflinks would be a nice partner to a bespoke suit.

It's also giving me a chance to play with my new stamps... not as easy as I first thought, but annealing is definitely the key! The cufflink fittings are from Cookson Gold.

Once I've finished making these samples, I've got a few more complex design ideas for rings / pendants that I'm looking forward to attempting soon, plus I have a few opals and pretty stones I need to set.

  

Filigree and claw setting pendant

Oh dear, life has been a bit hectic recently - spending time with family, going on holiday, etc - so haven't really had a lot of spare time to blog. I shall make a promise to myself to try and post at least once a week!

In June, I made this for my nearly-Step-Mother's birthday, at an all-day workshop with Amy Surman. I really wanted to try making a claw setting from scratch, and thought I'd attempt filigree at the same time! This took about 6 hours - very time consuming but quite ambitious given the number of new techniques I was trying, and there are a crazy number of soldering joints in this one piece (probably 40-ish?!). Most of this piece was made using different sizes of wire (1.2mm-ish square wire, 0.8mm for the setting and some of the structure, 0.6 for the filigree) - I curled all the bits and just played around to see what worked, instead of following a design pattern exactly.

It was polished in a magnetic polisher - which is a nifty machine like a tiny tumbler, with tiny pins and which polishes in about 15 mins... and now I really want one.

Luckily, my nearly-step-mother really liked it, and appreciated how it was made specially for her - she has even asked me to make matching earrings for her Christmas gift, haha!

Silver rings

I have always loved rings - they are probably my favourite type of jewellery. That's probably why the first thing I ever made was a ring. I love the possibilities with rings, and how they are perfect for showing off pretty stones.

I made this simple ring to practice stone setting - my first attempt at a bezel setting (I made this before the camera charm). Choosing a square cut amethyst for a first go wasn't the easiest, but it turned out ok. I left the band with a brushed matte finish, but polished the bezel cup and the edges of the ring band to a high shine for contrast.

Once I had the basics sorted, I moved on to something a little more difficult. This ring (which I name the 'pebble ring') is inspired by the pebbley beach near where I grew up. The uneven but smooth rounded pebbles and bits of sea glass which my sister and I used to collect as kids. I made each 'pebble' separately by melting bits of silver and used blue-green chalcedony reminiscent of both the sea and those little bits of sea glass. I collected all the silver pebbles together around a bezel and soldered the whole thing together.

This one is just for me to wear - I love it's irregularity and the colour of the stone. I have a couple of other ring designs in my sketchbook, just waiting to be made - along with a whole little pile of pretty stones that I can't stop myself buying off Etsy. Lots of work ahead!

Camera and dragonfly pendants

Since setting up my workbench in April / May, I've managed to make a few things at home. These were two of the first things I made - a camera pendant / charm and a dragonfly pendant. I've been obsessed with camera things since getting into photography about 5 years ago and I've always wanted a cute camera necklace - so I made my own! It's set with a blue-green chalcedony cabochon as the lens.

The dragonfly was inspired by the season and the summer weather aproaching. The silver wings have been textured with hammers.

I also bought a new dremel last month, which has actually enabled me to polish things now. It's a pretty cool tool, except I still haven't worked out all the different accessories - but it's opened up a whole new range a possibilities. I choose the dremel over a barrelling machine (although I want both) to give me the flexibility of using it with drills, burrs, etc - but now I'm drooling over a magnetic polisher instead of a tumbler, which I only discovered on saturday - as it polishes delicate pieces in about 15 minutes flat. My tool wishlist is growing longer every day...!

Holts Academy review - Beginners Stone Setting course

This is probably a bit overdue - but I should probably write about the Beginners Stone Setting course I attended at Holts Academy in mid-May. I've been putting this off slightly, because it's not exactly going to be a positive review - but I tried googling reviews before I signed up, and couldn't find anything - so maybe this will help one or two people out there *shrug*.

Overall, I was pretty disappointed with the course - it was really badly organised and didn't really meet any of my expectations - so in the end I actually only attended the first day, because I didn't think it was worth following through to the second day.


Full review after the jump....