Shhh... my mother hoards jewelry findings! Haha... lucky for me :). I have seen many old watch pieces piling up over the years and always thought they would make great additions to some other jewelry item. What better time than now? I had been talking about making rings and other types of metal jewelry pieces for a while and this Christmas my mom gave me a gift certificate for a jewelry lesson with.... HER. So I had a quality one-on-one lesson and learned the basic techniques of annealing, soldering (just learned how to spell that!) and working with various types of metals. Soldering is the use of a fusible metal alloy (metal containing more than one element) to create a joint or connection between two metal pieces. (I did not know that definition before.)
I started with a sterling silver rod and hammered it so it was flat. Then I hammered it to form a circle. I did this around a mandrel to get the correct size. Then I soldered the ends of the ring together to form a continuous circle. Next I soldered on the old watch piece. I finished up by polishing, polishing and polishing!
It's lovely. As are you ;-)
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