Engraving day 5

Today we worked on putting the cat claws and other cuts we learned into scrolls. I was having some problems with my onglette engraver at first, so that's why the first two scrolls have some problems on their spine.

I was able to fix that and made the final scrolls bursting out of the flower.

The type of scrolls we were doing were bright cut western style engraving...at least I believe that's what it's called.

All of the work done this week has been very tiny, so don't let the photos deceive you. Most items were probably 6mm-8mm at their largest and 1mm at their smallest.

Teacher's practice plate

Our teacher was gracious enough to give us each one of the practice plates that he did demos on in class. There are a few scrolls and flowers. Very very cool to have!

Engraving day 4, part 2

These are most of my first flowers...the exception is the flower near the snow flake. That was the onglette cut, line drawing flower.

Engraving day 4

Today we worked on bright cutting flowers. There is also one flower that I cut with an onglette to give it a more line drawing feel. It's pretty clear which flowers were my first...especially since I had the lines for the general shape in the wrong place. We also worked on a bright cut to add to the cat claw cut...this will be instrumental to the scrolls we will be working on tomorrow.

Engraving day 3

Today we did more flowers and variations on the wheat leaf. One technique we learned was how to sculpt out the entire leaf...mine isn't quite there, but the technique, when done correctly is great.

We also started to learn various bright cutting cuts. Tomorrow we are going to learn how to use these cuts to make 8 different varieties of flowers.

You can really see the difference in the single flower....I finally understood what a scoop cut is supposed to be! Wow was that a relief.

Engraving day 2

Today we did a double wheat leaf on the "side" of a ring, and a single wheat leaf. We also did a square flower. These are all pretty rough and pretty terrible, but it's a building block I guess. At least you can kind of make out what we're going for...

Engraving day 1

Today we learned three different cuts using flat and onglette gravers. At the end of the day we started combining the cuts to make a wheat leaf pattern. Clearly mine needs some work, but it's my very first attempt. Hopefully tomorrow pans out better.

Upcoming week

We are starting on engraving this week with Jason Marchiafava. Should be exciting...pictures to follow

Setting the 3 stone ring and plating

Today we learned about plating. Not to sound like a dork, but I think it's really cool to be able to take a base metal such as brass and make it pretty and bright right with rhodium plating. I plated the three stone ring and also the ring from the bead and bright setting. Rhodium is harder to plate than gold. Therefore, we plated everything in gold first and then rhodium, to get a more even coating of rhodium. You can also mask areas with melted beeswax or nail polish and make them two toned. Some people did this with their pave ring and it looked awesome. They made the sunken base that the stones were set in rhodium and the band gold, it really makes the stones sparkle.

The important things to remember before plating are to ultra sonic the piece and rinse off in tap water but do NOT touch with your fingers. Then you use a platinum wire attached to the plating machine and do two distilled water baths and an electrode bath and then more distilled water and then plate and dip in distilled water and plate again if you want to do the rhodium.

Princess channel

This is a princess cut channel. We used the same channel band from the first round stone channel that I posted. Therefore we had to adjust the round holes to square. We cut our own azure bars and cut specific bearings for this type of stone.

Tapered Baguettes

Today we set a tapered baguette. We will finish this setting with an emerald cut in the center in a few weeks. We also learned about pouring ingots and how to install hinged shanks for people with arthritis and/or large knuckles. Here is a picture of the tapered baguette.

Tomorrow we are going to do another version of a princess channel (I believe it will be set into a round band, instead of the block type version we did before). We are also going to work on hinges and various repairs.

Finished Pave

So here are the picture of the finished pave. We can also use this same technique for thread setting (single lines of diamonds with two beads in the center hold the edge of 2 stones).

Advanced Pave

Today we started the foray into pave. There are problems with this first attempt of mine, but at least it's relatively coming together. We will do this again in 3 weeks after hand engraving, and apparently it will be a lot easier to do then.... Here are photos from my iphone all throughout the process. First drilled holes and on from there. Tomorrow I will use the beading tool to round out the beads and then file the top to make the triangle shape not look as awkward as it does now.

Also, all of these pictures were taken using my 10 power loupe, so a lot of problems that are standing out in these photos, aren't visible to the naked eye....though the problems shouldn't be there anyway, I just wanted to make that disclaimer.

Bead setting/pave practice and marquis v-prong

We did another "stone out" bead setting today as practice for the pave we are doing tomorrow. We also did a v-prong marquis.

Lots of stone setting

Here we have a lot of stone setting from the past 3 days. There is a princess bezel, marquis bezel, open channel, and a princess cut channel. We are starting pave tomorrow :-)