Dad's 5th Wedding Anniversary Gift (Hint, it's quite obviously jewelry)

So after the rings for Heather & Tyler were made I set out for my next conquest in jewelry making, if you will. Lucky for me my dad has his fifth wedding anniversary coming up. I convinced him, it was not hard at all, to let me make a platinum & 18k bracelet for Janet. After the gathering of materials I set out to into semi-uncharted territory. I use this term because I had made a couple chains a few years back so I knew the general process. Let me just put out that I made this a little hard on myself.

  I started by melting the platinum ring that I had purchased, at a great price by the way, on the special block I only use for platinum, due to potential contamination issues. I usually don't have to wear gloves when pouring silver or gold but platinum needs a lot of heat and the reflecting-back action of that heat tends to make my torch hand a little warmer than I would like. Using the tungsten tipped tweezers in my right hand I manipulate and 'fold' the metal over onto itself to get the best results. This can take a couple minutes and it doesn't fully melt on one side, so flipping it around helps in getting a good final product. The gold part was easier as I just threw it in a crucible, melted it with some flux and then poured it into an ingot mold. I then put them through the rolling mill, one at a time and then cleaning it as not to contaminate the platinum, so that they would become longer and more into their eventual shape. The thing about rolling out platinum is that it's easy; if you mess up or put a huge divot into it you can remelt the surface and its good as new. As for gold, not so much. Now we get to where I had some trouble; making the links.

I first looked at a couple of Janet's pieces of jewelry to see what size the links could be. I narrowed it down to a small half rounded style. I put the bar through the half round section of the rolling mill and once annealed, put it on the mandrel I had made. The problem was that I made them too wide and was unable to properly bend the platinum, an extremely hard to bend once shaped, around itself, not to mention fit into the 18k links. I scraped all the links and started over, making them the same size but using a bigger mandrel and failed once again. The third time I made them correctly but at least I got much needed practice in.  They were thicker this time, and not as wide as before. Soldering proved to be hard as well.

The proximity of the 18k links to the platinum links, as you can see by the pattern of 2 then 1 below made it so that I could only barely 'kiss' the platinum with the flame before the 18k would also get red. I melted two 18k links because of this, but I had more, so I didn't worry about it. I used a heat sink method, putting the 18k links on the tweezer to draw heat away and then carefully aiming my heat on a portion of the platinum link. When that wasn't working as I'd hoped I used a lower temperature solder that melts at only 2,190F vs the 2,910 of the higher temp solder. It should be noted that the 18k hard solder melts at 1,400F so you better watch the flame carefully. Once I did that, success! Of course I didn't make enough of either link so I had to make more which was small potatoes in comparison. I did have one more problem, however, and that came in the form of polishing the whole assembly.

I first tried tumbling everything in steel shot, but this did not work as well as I hoped and was more of a time suck than anything else. I then tried using the papers I usually use but made my hands ache terribly. I then decided to hand finish, with the proper abrasives, each individual link one at a time. The 18k was easy, the platinum too the majority of the time being smaller and less available due to the difference in link size, not to mention that it eats . I used seven (7) different items, five special wheels and two highly advanced polishing compounds on each link. This took over two hours to complete, but man was it worth it! The shine is unlike anything I have achieved on a metal surface and it was all about a progression of different grits.

The look on Janet's face, as well as a couple choice expletives from her mouth, were all the thanks I needed (except for a check from dad for the whole project). To be honest I think I made this for around the same or even less than the same bracelet in 14k would have cost at a jewelry store. Go look it up for yourself, you can find a platinum bracelet on blue nile for $530/3.7 grams, 1/4 the weight of the 12 grams this piece is. I can charge half that price (72/per gram) and still make a double my money. I think its time kick it into high gear, wouldn't you say? So what did I learn from all this?

I learned that I can't be afraid to make mistakes and start over if need be. The slightest error can cost an hour. Careful planning goes a long way, that's for sure. The doubting, and no question, scared autism voice that tells me I can't goes away once I do well at something, but that doesn't mean he isn't still there the next time I do something similar or brand new. I try to turn him off as much as I can, but more on that in another post, but most likely I'll say that discussion for the book.

Questions or comments? Let me know (especially if it comes to wanting to purchase my jewelry)