A lesson in recycling

I had always been taught to use a container at my jeweler’s desk to catch metal filings, so I could melt those little bits and make more things…. but I never really took that seriously since I was working on things that seemed so small as to be inconsequential.  Well guess what.  Even though small, it adds up!  See those 10 little balls of silver near the top-middle of this picture?  Those are were made from  the metal filings from the other silver shown (like, literally I collected all the bits I filed off of all those circles shown in this picture).  HOLY MOLY.  What didn’t look like a very big pile of metal dust turned into something I use on other jewelry with almost no work on my part, other than to be a little more diligent about where my dust falls.

 

 

RecyclingSilver

 

 

I can’t believe how much silver I’ve wasted up til now.

 

O_o

Trying something new

Took a class this summer to learn a new technique. Here are some of the results of that class —- I’ve yet to spend much time on my own doing this at home. I guess I sort of got distracted by all the other fun things one can do in the summertime.

Keumboo First Try

 

 

I have so so many ideas of what else to try with this technique that I almost don’t want to post this, just because i KNOW I can do better. Perhaps putting this up here is a way to egg myself on to DO this, not just occasionally think about it.

Metal Owls


Much much earlier this year, I started playing around with owls.  I have plans for these things, just….. need to make time to finish them 🙂

Three newest pendants

Today’s efforts after work yielded these! #27, #28, & #29 in a series of fifty. I am 58% finished with my bezel setting challenge! Yea!

Ooooh! Shiny!

I’ve been playing around with a new technique: polishing stuff in a rock tumbler. Initial results? WOW!!! Sooooo shiny!

And there’s an extra bonus, too. Yesterday I found out that half an hour is enough to polish the silver BUT LEAVES MY DICHRO ALONE… Which is awesome because that means I can polish all of my glass bezel pendant without dealing with the buffer!