Jewellery course - class #3

This week's class was mainly used up finishing last week's ring project. So I started with this




There was no creme brûlée blow torch, instead we used what can only be described as a dentist's drill, thankfully without the high pitched squeal. The drill-like weapon was wrapped in sandpaper and used to polish the inside of the ring, it did a remarkable job. 2 minutes of whizzing and the inside of my ring was like a mirror. Unfortunately the outside was not so easy. Not sure why but the dentist drill couldn't be used on the outside think there was a danger of us accidentally polishing our fingers (and I thought the blow torch last week was dangerous). So old fashioned sandpaper and elbow-grease was the order of the day.

After much sanding I had the following which I was quite proud of. Let's face it, it has all the right ring qualities -
1. It's round
2. It's finger size
(I'm not the fussiest of ladies, I know my limits)



Not content with a plain band (oh no, you can buy those in any shop) I set off on a mission to customise. You might have to trust me here as the picture isn't great, I have battered my silver ring with a hammer to within an inch of it's life, I now has a mottled effect. I'm really quite pleased with project number 2

For those of you with super-duper eye sight you might have spotted a grey/purple area around the middle of this ring, apparently this is called fire-stain and is caused when heating the metal. This gives an unintentional colouring to the ring which I would never be able to replicate if I actually wanted to or know how to stop happening again, oh well I like it and that's all that matters.



So here is a sneak peek at next week's project....




as Rolf Harris would say "do you know what it is yet?"