Sunday 24 March 2013

On the Workbench

On the workbench today are more custom skate numbers:

Custom skate numbers work in progress  Roller derby skate number 67 work in progress

They are cut (with REALLY tiny sawblades) from solid silver sheet, then curves are filed on the edges.  After that, I engrave lines to separate the two numbers.  Like so:

Silver derby skate number 67 work in progress 2 Silver roller deby skate number 67 reverse

Next step, sanding, soldering on the jump ring, more sanding, then polishing.

I’m also doing a custom Khanda pendant at the moment. It’s only little, so quite fiddly, but me and my tiny sawblades do like a challenge!

Khanda pendant work in progress Silver Khanda pendant work in progress 2

I’ve just started to file the edges off, so it’s got a fair bit of work to go yet…

Saturday 23 March 2013

Hello!

So, I’ve not posted anything for a while, huh?  Trying to keep up with orders and new custom enquiries sadly leaves very little time to write about them!

But anyway, been designing loads of new stuff recently.  I’ve been trying to carve a teeny tiny 5 claw crown collet from wax, so I can give tiny crowns to my mini-bees, but have finally admitted defeat, as I can’t get all the claws aligned and get it perfectly round at such a tiny size. I’ve sent off my scribblings to a CAD company now to get a quote.  I’ve never used CAD before, as I’ve always felt it kind of “cheating”.  Even though I might have designed the tiny crown, I didn’t technically make it by hand, so it doesn’t feel quite right, but in this case is definitely necessary.  It’s supposed to look like this:

Crown collet 2

I’ll let you know how it goes…

I’ve also designed some new mini-weather – the moulds are currently with the caster and I should get them back on Thursday – exciting!  There will be more earrings, necklaces, and even some rings!  I know, I know, I hardly ever make rings, but I’m trying to start doing them more.  Because I just make jewellery that I love and want to wear, and I don’t wear rings, it never occurs to me to make them!  These are going to be awesome though.

I’ve also done another custom skate number necklace recently – I’ve been doing quite a few of these recently, but don’t always get time to photograph them before they’re posted out.
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Custom roller derby skate number
Custom roller derby skate number 27   Silver roller derby skate number
Terrible pictures!  I just did a super-quick white background experiment with bright underlighting, but didn’t have time to set up the other lights, so the exposure is all out of whack.

I’ve also got some more custom work on the bench – more of which soon.