Making Jewelry Without Soldering

Since I temporarily gave up soldering and enameling, I've been a little stuck on how to make interesting jewelry using only cold working methods. After a brief and unsuccessful foray into wirewrapping, I had the idea to try out some tab settings using etched copper pieces in the place of stones. Here's my first successful piece made in this style. It took a little refining to get this design to look "finished" the shaping of the prongs and the curvature of the backplate really helped to give it a little dimension. The setting is cut from a single piece of silver sheet, so there is no soldering involved, and I used my new electrolytic copper etching setup to etch the copper.
This one's available in my shop right now, and I'm planning on making more pieces in this series soon!

PS: More copper beads coming this week thanks to the magic of electrolytic etching!

Liver of Sulfur Gel

Like many jewelers, I have had an old, rusty can of liver of sulfur (or "the stink" as we call it at my house) sitting around for years. After taking a little hiatus from jewelry making, I was disappointed to find that my mostly full can of liver of sulfur had gone bad on me. (Interestingly enough, when liver of sulfur goes bad it stops stinking) So I replaced my old can of dry liver of sulfur with a jar of the new gel variety, and I am very happy with it! It is much easier to use, and gives very consistent results. With the dry stuff, you had to dig around to find a chunk that was the right size, then wait for it to dissolve, and you could never be quite sure how strong the solution was going to turn out. With the gel variety, I just dip the end of a little scoop into the jar and stir it into a small container of hot water. It's easy to make just as much as you need. Plus, the gel liver of sulfur is supposed to be more stable than the dry stuff and has an extended shelf life. Of course, it's still really stinky, and you still have to be careful not to breathe in the fumes, etc, but It's a big improvement!

Electrolytic Copper Etching

As part one of my mission to make my studio practice healthier for me and any future babies, I decided to give electrolytic copper etching a try. It turns out it's so easy to do I am surprised more people haven't tried it. I downloaded an article from Art Jewelry about how to do it, but you can also find lots of good information floating around the internet.
Basically, all you need to do is hook up a D battery to two pieces of copper suspended in a saltwater bath. One is the piece you are etching, the other can be any piece of scrap copper. The current draws copper from the etching piece to the scrap copper. You can use the same kinds of resists you would use for acid etching, but you don't need the etching chemicals. Neat huh?
Here's what you need:

• D battery
• D battery holder
• Alligator clips
• Heavy copper wire (14g. is good)
• Copper to be etched
• Scrap copper
• Pure salt (kosher or canning and pickling salt)
• Plastic or glass container
• Resist (pnp film, stop-out varnish, asphaltum, etc)
  

To get set up, you need to attach your alligator clips to the lead wires on your battery holder. My friend Paul helped me out (thanks Paul!) because even though I know all about silver soldering I know nothing about soldering electrical components. Then you make a saturated salt solution by dissolving as much salt as you possibly can in water.

To get your metal ready, you need to get the piece you will be etching really nice and clean by scouring it with a scrub pad or heating and pickling it, then draw your design on with whatever resist you are using. I was surprised when I first started experimenting with this technique to find that the salt water is just as hard on the resist as the ferric chloride was. Permanent marker didn't work at all, and the sharpie paint pen I used to use for beads works ok but doesn't last long enough to get a good deep etch, so I am back to using the stop-out varnish (check out my acid etching tutorial for more info on different resists) The scrap copper just needs to be cleaned off with a scrub pad or brass brush to remove any residue, then it's ready to go.

Once your metals are ready, fill a plastic or glass container with the salt solution, then attach your two pieces of copper to copper wires and hang them from the sides of the container so they are submerged in the solution. Attach the positive alligator clip to the piece you want to etch and the negative clip to the scrap copper. You will immediately see little bubbles rising from the scrap copper, and within minutes the water will start to get cloudy and reddish brown with copper (Note: Don't pour this water down the drain! collect it and talk to your local waste management people about how to dispose of it. It's not hazardous to handle but it's not good to put copper into the water supply!)

It takes about an hour or more to get a really nice deep etch. Depending on what effect you are looking for, you can get a visible etch in about a half hour. I need to do some more experimentation, but my first piece has a visible etch so I consider it a success.

Overall I am very pleased with this project. It was easy to do and safe, without the mess of ferric chloride and it cost about seven dollars for all the supplies to get started. I am planning on doing a lot more copper etching with this technique, so I should have lots of new etched copper jewelry and beads coming soon!

New Studio!

My new studio is finally starting to come together enough for me to post a few photos. My new apartment is the top floor of an old (100+ years old) house, and it has a huge pantry off the kitchen. It's really more of a room than a closet, and it has big glass front cabinets, lots of storage space and a tiled countertop. To make it even better, a previous resident has used it as a darkroom and installed a whole row of electrical outlets and a vent fan in the ceiling. My previous "studio" was in my parent's laundry room, so I am really excited to have a place to work right in my own apartment. I finally got most of my tools and equipment moved up from my parent's and now I have a semi-working studio. I'm just waiting to get some bench-level ventilation hooked up before I get my soldering and enameling areas working. Here are a few pictures.

New Year's Excuses

Happy New Year everybody! I think the time has come to explain the bareness of my shop and the infrequency of my blog posts. Of course, I am right in the middle of my first year of teaching, and recently moved my studio to my new apartment. It would appear, however, that the fates wanted my life to be as crazy as possible right now, so my husband and I are expecting a baby! (you can read my husband's thoughts on the subject on his blog)
Now, I'm a little wary of enameling (various metal pigments) and soldering (flux, metal fumes, pickle) while pregnant. I have heard a lot of mixed information about the health risks of metalwork during pregnancy.
After doing a lot of research and talking to my doctor I have decided to err on the side of caution and temporarily give up enameling, soldering, and chemical etching. I've decided to use this as an opportunity to re-evaluate the healthfulness of my studio practices, with the goal of making a healthier and safer environment for the baby and myself. Here are a few of the things I am planning on doing:
-Replace chemical etching with electrolytic etching (more on this coming soon!)
-Replace flux and pickle with safer options.
-Install bench-level ventilation to supplement ceiling ventilation in my new studio.
I'll have posts on all my studio updates coming in the next few months. If you have any other ideas for making a studio safer and healthier, leave me a comment!
Bonus: You can see an awesome drawing of our future baby done by our friend Josh here

Drawings on Canvas

I've always preferred drawing to painting, but I have always been cranky about the fragile nature of works on paper. I've never been a big fan of matting and framing. I would rather just finish a piece and hang it up on the wall. I tried using watercolor canvas and watercolor gesso, but I wasn't really happy with the results. Then I discovered these acrylic inks. They have the same consistency as regular inks but they can be used on regular acrylic gesso and combined with acrylic paints. I've been using them diluted like liquid watercolors, and applying them straight out of the bottle with a metal nib pen. They make beautiful watercolor washes. So far I have been very happy with the results. The lighting in my new studio isn't great yet, so these photos are a little washed out, but you can see the texture. I still love my regular inks and watercolors (especially my delicious shellac-based drawing inks) but it's nice to try something a little different.

Shop Open!

I'm happy to announce that my shop is finally open again, just in time for the holidays! Unfortunately, my studio is still closed so I won't be able to make any more custom orders for a while, but everything in my shop is available and ready to ship.