20:13 - 2005-10-04
FSOJ Week 2: The Process of Screwing Up - er - Making \"Design Choices\"
FSOJ Week 2: The Process of Screwing Up - er - Making "Design Choices"
Weaving weft and warp
Struggling with the design
At last! The Belt Ring
I'm constantly telling my students that I don't make mistakes, I make "Design Choices"...
It wasn't my intention to use my torch to make the ring I'm posting this week. But during the process of making it, I discovered that the design just wasn't going to work any other way.
I did everything bass ackwards with this ring. I started off with making the weaving - a traditional warp and weft weave. I made a foot long piece, so that I've have some extra to play with. The ring was originally a size 8, but after screwing up, er, making "Design Choices" several times, it's now a size 5!
The "belt buckle" is a jump ring made from 1.5 mm square wire, with a piece of 1.5 mm square wire soldered onto the back. I wrapped the weaving onto the buckle, only to discover that I couldn't get the ends through a second time. So I fused the ends of the wire into a ball while it was assembled, since taking it apart would have destroyed the weaving. Thank God for the Little Torch! It makes a teeny tiny flame that goes just where you want it! Then hammered the ball flat, and then filed it to a point to make a tongue to stick through the belt. By that point the weaving had horrific firescale, and even pickling didn't turn the silver white again - it came out looking light grey.
So... I had to come up with an idea on how to cover up that screw - er - "Design Choice"...
It doesn't show well in the photos, but the weaving is actually blackened with liver of sulphur. Imagine trying to oxidize a piece AFTER it was assembled. That meant having to mask the buckle with nail polish before dunking it into the LOS mixture...
Naturally my DH is very happy that I'm "moving the right direction" with my new designs for jewellery - that is to say, I'm using a torch. He is constantly "encouraging" me to abandon working solderless. In actuality, this is a case of choosing the technique to best achieve the design.
That said, I'm thinking of doing two more rings like this with different shaped belt buckles. Only next time, I'll do all the fusing, LOS and grunt work before assembly...
