Piercing Update

A few posts ago, I told you all about a new tool I had recently purchased - my jeweler's saw. I showed the first attempt I made at sawing...pretty clumsy! Well, I'm glad to say that I really enjoy the challenge of piercing metal and while I'm far from perfect, practice does make "better"! Here are some of the pieces I have made with that technique:

Dreams Gone to Seed

New Growth

At the risk of sounding like I'm bragging, I think these turned out really well. Sometimes I can't believe how far I've come since I first started making jewelry!

Sawin'

Last month, I was so excited to get a new tool that I had been drooling over for quite a while...a jeweler's saw. I'm really glad I bought it. I've been enjoying it so much, it really opens up some new design ideas for me. Look and see:

A New Technique

You know, ten years ago, if you had told me that I would one day be excited about buying tools (a saw in particular), I would have thought you were crazy. But at the ripe old age of almost-37, life has taken a lot of interesting twists and turns and my obsession with creating jewelry has made it necessary for me to learn to use different sorts of tools. Along the way, I've gotten pretty adept at using hammers (well, except for last week, but hopefully that was a lesson learned) and drills. And now my latest tool/toy is a jeweler's saw. Here it is:

You can adjust the frame to accomodate different blade lengths, and there are different sizes of blades. The ones I have are size 2/0, which is pretty tiny. They are about the size of a piece of floss:

I have a lot of practicing and experimenting to do! There are different blade sizes to try, as well as testing it out on different gauges of metal. Here's my first attempt:

It's not the worst thing I ever saw, but I can tell that I need a lot of work and fine-tuning. This copper is pretty thick, so next, I'm going to try using a thinner gauge. I'll let you know how it goes!