Week 9 in Nashville

This post is overdue, but I have been very busy in my last couple weeks while here in Nashville, TN training as a goldsmith. After the first eight weeks of school, Blaine gave way to former student and master jeweler/gun engraver Jason Marchiafava. Blaine thinks very hightly of Jason, putting him in the top 5% of all jewelers, period. His work speaks for itself and seeing it takes your breathe away. He has done jewelry and gun engravings that take 500-1000 hours each to complete. All of us as students hope to get where Jason is, one day. As for the engraving class he was teaching it was more basic but still something that could be greatly profitable. We started by doing a series of different cuts into copper plates. Although time consuming this was necessary to develop muscle memory needed to execute various designs in metal. I started the week off ok and by the second day was getting better. The next day, though, I seemed to stay at the same skill level. The class was progressing and I seemed to be merely treading water. My patterns were basic, but didn't quite have the look that everyone else was achieving. That sort of wore on me.
The week itself was great, just my work was not up to where I'm about to invest a few hundred dollars for an engraving ball. I feel that I have to make money doing other things first, and then tkae spare time to go back and finish what I started. That seems to be a pattern in my life. The good news for me is that Jason was horrible his first ever engraving class. I have a lot of work ahead of me.
The whole experience was fun. I never truly gave up but I didn't try as hard as I could have by the end of the week. Engraving does interest me, not to mention the money you can make on the side by embellishing rings, but this is something that will take some time for my body to acclimate to. On the positive I have the basics down and once you build a foundation it isn't easy to tear the house down, especially with someone such as myself.
Every time I have failed while here training I have learned something. These skills are not built in, rather built on. If you do better each time than you're going to find yourself down a better path. I'm not one to continue down the road of generic pep talks so I'm just going to end this one here.

Until next time.