Jewelry 101: How to Make a Pendant - Part 1 - and General Silversmithing Tips!

Hey guys, it's Sean. Today I wanted to do a video for y'all about jewelry stuff. So instead of lapidary like my last ones, we're going to take one of those stones and actually do a pendant with it. I'll go from start to finish, show you how to cut out your metal, how to smooth it and file it down, how to put some texture on it and just some different design elements, how to do a bezel wall around it and the bail for it, which is the hoop where the cord goes through. So if you guys have any questions about any of this, definitely leave a comment in the comments and I'll try to respond to that as soon as I can. But I hope this helps and just gives you a better idea of what goes into making one of these pieces. So let's go ahead and get started. Okay, so this is my sketch board, if you will. These are just some designs that I have sketched out. I'll take the stone and draw just around it to kind of create an artificial bezel there and then just do, you know, kind of sketch around and kind of create whatever you think would look cool. And in this, the dark areas would be textured areas. This one has like some mountains. This is the side view. So, I mean, this is kind of the really creative part where, you know, the only limitation is your mind. Okay, so the first step is actually just doing the bezel wall. So this is bezel wire and what you do is you just pretty much put it next to the stone. You try to bend it as close to the shape of the stone as you can. And you can anneal it if you want to be even softer. I mean, you can get a pretty good shape without that. And then just, I usually go in with pliers and kind of like clean up the angles. But once you get, so that's pretty well wrapped around it. You want to have a little bit of extra space though because you never want it to be too small that your stone can't fit. But I will go ahead and mark off where you want to cut it with my pencil. And then I'll cut as straight or as flush of a cut as I can. If you have flush cutters, use those. And because the join between these two pieces has to be super clean to get the solder to flow. Alright, so here is the initial shaping of the wall, the bezel. And so what we want to do is we want this to be just super clean. And you got to file that down a little bit if you don't have flush cutters. And so I'm going to go ahead and use, this is a flat number two file, I believe. And so I'm just going to go in there and kind of do pretty lightly. Because you don't want to round out the edge at all. You want it to be super straight. I'm going to just clean these up a little bit. And filing or sanding a join is always a smart thing to do. You just want it to be as clean of a join as possible. So that looks pretty close. And then you want to pinch it together if you can to get a little extra tension. Alright, so here is the bezel before I solder it together. So you can see the join is super flush. And I actually dunked it in the pickle jar, which is something I'll talk about in a minute. To clean it up. Because you want to make sure anything you're soldering together is super clean. Because any kind of dirt or grime will prohibit the flux or the solder from actually flowing. So this is my charcoal brick. It's super warm. But I'm going to put that down. And then what we want to do is get some solder and some flux out to get that join joined. So that bottle in the corner there is Cooper Nail. That's the flux I use. Which is something you have to put on a join in the solder. It kind of tells the solder where to flow. This is my little jar of it. I'm just using a paintbrush to kind of paint that over the join. And then I'll dip my solder in it as well. Just a disclaimer. I never went to jewelry school. A lot of this stuff might be not proper technique. But I've done a lot of trial and error. And had a lot of things not work for me. So when they do work, I will keep doing them that way. Oops. Sorry about that. And then here is my... I've got some tweezers here. I cut off little pallions of solder. It's super tiny. You don't need much for this. I'm going to dip that in my flux. And set that on the charcoal. And then put the join actually right on top of it. There's different techniques for doing this too. This is one that I find works. Because when you heat up flux and you have solder on it. If you put it on before you heat the flux up. Then the solder can sometimes pop off. When it hits a certain temperature. It's really annoying. So this kind of holds the solder in place. And it will actually flow up the seam. It doesn't really abide by gravity's rules. This is my torch that I'm using. It's not a super amazing expensive one. I think it cost me $50 or so. But Burns-O-Matic. Map Pro Torch. It definitely gets the job done. So what I'm going to do here. I have a window open. You definitely want to make sure you're well ventilated. And have a fume extractor if you can. What I'm going to do with this is just heat it. And kind of hit the join last. Because you want to heat all of the metal. Not just the part where it's joining. So I'm going to start and actually heat up around it more. And eventually come to the join. And then it should flow. You want to get it going to almost a bright red. Not quite because you don't want to melt it. That looked like it joined pretty well. It actually started to bend in a little bit. But that will be able to get bent back out. But you can see. And then the next step is to quench it. So you want to put it in water. And then put it in a pickle jar. A pickle jar is like an acidic solution. That cleans all the fire scale. Alright. So here is that. Once I took it out of the pickle. It's all cleaned up. But you can see the shape's not exactly there. So what I do. Again, I don't know if this is the proper technique. I take my rawhide mallet. And just hold this on a flat surface. And kind of tap. Tap it all around the stone. To try to fit the shape. As well as possible. So, alright. You can see that that's a lot closer to the actual shape. Alright. So I got my shape here. Fits pretty well to the stone. The other thing I want to do. You want to sand the bottom of this. So I've got two grits. I've got a 220 and a 400. Obviously the higher the grit. If you need more shaping. Sometimes it's not perfectly flush on the bottom. So you just want to sand. I usually sand both sides. A little bit. And with this. I'm not right now. But you probably want to wear a mask. Because sanding. And all that fun stuff. Definitely kicks some stuff into the air. So wear a mask when you do this. Alright. Now it's time to shape out the setting. Or the base. And I'm going to do this with 16 gauge sterling. So it's a little thicker. Than you might use. But basically just slide this around. Wherever it's most efficient to use. And I'm going to trace that out. And I'll get to sawing it with my jewelry saw. This here is what we call a bench pin. This is where I do my sawing. I put my tray underneath it to catch stuff. I don't have a jeweler's bench. Which would be great. But that has a special place for all this. But anyway. So I just bring this over here. And my jewelry saw is this guy. Alright. I've got a number 5 blade in here. This is a burr life. Which you can use on your saws and your files. It's just a lubricant. That really makes it a lot easier to saw. And it also extends the life of the blade. So I'm going to start in this crook here. Sometimes I'll cut a little snip. If it's starting on a flat spot. To make sure you have a groove to start your blade. When rounding corners. You want to kind of move the metal. And slowly move the saw. Just keep the saw straight. And turn the metal. Instead of turning the saw. If you can help it. Alright. So this is a part. I want to cut along these. I want to cut along these lines. Because there's not a groove there. I'm just going to take my shears. And if it's thinner metal. You can go ahead and cut all the way. I don't like to cut any larger than 18 gauge with this. I just cut a little nook. A little groove. To give me a place to start. And then I'll go ahead and cut the rest of that off with my saw. So here is my shaping of that. If we put our initial sketch on top of it. We can see it's not. It's close. Not quite there. So now what I'm going to do. Is go in and file. And smooth the edges down. And what I use for most of that. This is a number 2. Big flat file. So if you have rounded edges. This is a half round. That you can use. And then for smaller detail stuff. These are really nice. These are Rio Grande. It's Phillip Dick. I think is the name of the brand. But they're German. They're needle files. And a bunch of different shapes in there. That you can use just for fine detail work. And you can do this either just by hand. Or if you want to put it in a vise. Or if you want to use your bench pin. That's another really good thing to use your bench pin for. You can kind of place it on it. And use it as a crutch. I tend to do a lot of my filing just on my here filing cabinet. Yep, yep, yep. Okay, so this is after the filing. That I've done. And now I'm going to go in and sand it all down. Again, starting with 220. And then down to 400. Okay, so if we're looking back at the original design. We've already worked on the base here. So I'm going to work on the bail now. Just kind of have to look at the shape of this. And think about what it would be if it was rounded out a little bit. So it's going to be a little longer than this. If that's how tall it is. And I have a front and back obviously. So I want the bottom to be curved like that. I want the same width but just a little bit longer. Maybe about like that. I'll probably make this a little more precise. But this is just a rough sketch. To give you an idea of what that might look like. So here it is cut out of the silver. And I did it the same way I cut out the base of the pendant. Okay, so here's the design that I went ahead and settled on. I think. I often will sketch out a lot of different possibilities before I settle on one. But if you use pencil, you can erase it right off the metal. Okay, the first step here is to get a stamp to do this. So actually for the straight lines, I just use this Stanley chisel. And so basically you just put it on this metal block, hammering block. And you're going to line it right up with that. Make sure you hold it real still and steady. And then double check. And then click stamp. And sometimes you can go back in and do another one. If it needs to be deeper or something. But you can see it. That goes in there. And then what I'm going to do actually is go ahead and file the edge of that. To kind of give it a little more character. So it goes a little bit deeper into the metal. Okay, so that was the first one. So now I'm just going to go through and do the other ones where I want the lines to be. I hope I don't screw it up. I usually just wipe off the eraser. Wipe off the pencil. But there you can see. Those initial stamps look pretty good. And I usually go in from the back too. Just to make sure it has a nice, it just looks finished. And you can see on the side too. I'm going to go ahead and do that for all of the lines. And I'll show you what it's like. Okay, so here are those finished pieces. With the filing done. You can just kind of see how it goes on to the side too. And just makes it a little more real. A little more defined of design lines. So the next step is to texture. So I'm going to put some texture all down here. All up there. And then on some of the bail. And I'll show you what I use for that. Okay, so this is where my Fordham machines come in handy. I have two. The LX and the SR. The SR is going to be a higher rotation. So it goes up to 18,000 RPMs. That's kind of your main jeweler's one. With all the sanders and the polishers and bits like that. I really like the LX. Yeah, the LX is the other one. That's the slower machine. It only goes up to 5,000. But it's got higher torque at lower speeds. And so this is the hammer tool on there. Which is my favorite. So it's got foot pedals down there. But this one is a hammer. It turns from rotary into pneumatic. So you can do punch stuff real slow. Or real fast. But with the hammer tool, if you use it on the other one, on the SR. You can burn it out. Because it's only rated up to 5,000. So with the other one going up to 18,000 RPMs. If you use it too fast, you'll burn it out. And these aren't cheap. So I'm going to put this on. This is a carbide tip. And I'm going to put that on here. And then I will do all the hammering of this stuff. Just all the texturing on it. Here are those pieces after I put some texture on them. Those are in focus. What I like to do now is actually go over those still with sandpaper. And just kind of file, like wear it down a little bit. I think to me it gives it a little bit more of a worn and finished look. You don't have to do that obviously. And I actually used to do texturing with just a nail. I would take just a regular nail. And go in and just scratch the crap out of it. It's hard to control that. And it got kind of hard on my hand.