Bronze Forged Pendants

I have been making pendants for a while now, firstly in steel then in copper and now in bronze. I thought (hoped) I could cold forge the bronze like copper but it work hardens very quickly and then splits under the hammer, so alas I had to fire the forge up but only a little heat.

Its an odd material to work with as you have to forge it hot but if you get it to cherry red or hotter it just turns into mush with out warning. When its hot its very soft but then in two seconds its rock hard again, steel and copper on the other hand tend to harden slowly as they cool.

I had a play and made these today for pendants or key chains.

Forged Steel pendants

I make these quite a bit while the forge is warming or cooling. People seem to like them as they have a nice organic rustic look to them and there a little bit ironage like. I like to experiment with the scrolls and loops and each one is pretty unique. They are a little fiddly to make as you have to keep the steel hot to form it and as its pretty thin stuff it likes to cools fast.

Stacking rings

I always liked the looks of stacking rings as they give the appearance of a band but give you the option of how and how many you want to wear. I made these from 2mm diameter sterling silver and 1.5mm copper. I thought about fusing them together to made one ring but I think they work better loose. I would model them on my finger as they just about fit on my pinky but my hands are no models hands.

Punch from Spring

One of my neighbor's kids was out on a walk when he came across a coil spring of some kind. He brought it to me as he know i could make some strange thing from it, Its is good steel and it hardens well. I was asked by a British Blades member http://www.britishblades.com to make him a couple of punches for him to emboss some thin copper he was going to make into some fishing lures. I cut off some small sections of the spring and annealed them then got to work on them with some hand files and shaped the tip to be like fish scales. I oil quenched them and gave them a good clean and tested them some some old copper pipe. The customer was very pleased with them.

My Jeweller's bench

I been wanting a place of my own to do my silversmithing and my wife is getting a bit sick of me taking over the kitchen table. Normally jewelers benches cost about £200-400 each!!!, that's a fortune for a table with a semi-circle cut out of it. I went down to one of my local DIY stores and bought some spruce batons and some 1x2''and some timberboard some drilling and screwing later and a couple of layers of diamond hard varnish later and I have my very own jewelers bench. Its cost me a afternoon and about £60 for all the materials. Its much cheaper and bigger than a bought one.

Forgotten but not gone

I post up adverts for some of my items some sell and some just sit there for a while. I use photobucket for my image hosting and I always leave the links up so the photos are still there long after I have forgotten about the item for sale. I had a customer message me and ask me for a forged knife that I posted ages ago, the knife has been sitting here on my desk for a long time. Well its sold now so I figure its a good idea to leave adverts up for as long as you can as its a great way for people to see the sort of thing you make and they may even buy something you have forgotten about.

Some of my previous knives and blades

Here is a couple of photobucket slide shows that I did a while back.

Some of my previous knives

http://s5.photobucket.com/albums/y18...t=f7bd40b9.pbw

Some of my previous knife blades

http://s5.photobucket.com/albums/y18...t=c9652a7e.pbw

Making Mokume Gane

I have been experimenting in making Mokume Gane. This is one of my first rings, this was made from copper and sterling silver and was commissioned by a gent in in the middle east. I love mking this stuff, i really like the way the pattern reveals ists self as you sand the ring to shape. I am trying to master making Mokume in a kiln but i am finding it hard to source some of the sundery parts in the process. I do a google and you find a dozen sites in the States who sell exactly what you need but none in the UK, I know its out there its just a question of finiding it and finding what they call it here.

First day/post

I have just set this blog up and have never done a blog before. i plan to use it to keep track of things that I make, mostly out of metal, I just hope it does not turn into one of those blogs where people rant about the news and politics all day as we have a zillions of those.