Setting Sea Glass - Estona Metalsmithing & Jewelry Making Tutorials

hi my name is brejia and you are watching another estonia tutorial so in almost every one of my videos i ask you to share your results at the end of a tutorial luckily a lot of people have so far and one of them was lisa lisa made this piece of jewelry with some sea glass and then lisa asked me if she could send me some pieces of sea glass that she found in hawaii herself and she took them with her back to california and now these pieces made their way to the netherlands and i am so happy about it because we don't have sea glass here and of course i told lisa that she didn't have to do it but i was so happy and i think she noticed in the tone of my voice so thank you very much lisa this tutorial is especially for you i think it's so kind that you took the effort to send the sea glass to me and i hope you will enjoy this tutorial so lisa this one's for you and this is it the piece of sea glass that i am going to use to make a ring or a pendant i'm not quite sure yet what it's going to be and that is the way i like to work by just starting somewhere and seeing where it might take me and i thought it would be nice to add a little pop of color and i am using this turmeric to do so we are going to need a fairly high strip of silver to get this fitted in here because i am going to use a cabochon setting to set this stone this is a piece of silver that i still have laying around so i will cut the top part off and then i'll run it through my rolling mill a couple of times until i have a thinned out piece of silver that i can use to set this stone as always lubricate your saw blade i am using this pepe loop for it you can just use a regular candlestick as well and i'm going to cut off a piece so i can use it for my setting [Laughter] and i'll thin this out on the rolling mill this piece is still very soft and bendable so i won't have to anneal it before rolling it out so i have rolled my strip out until 0.7 millimeters thick but now i'm a bit hesitant because i don't know if this stone can take some pressure luckily i have another stone just like it this little one and i am just going to test how much pressure it can take oh okay now you may think what she doing of course it'll break but i want to see how quickly it will break i can see that it can take some pressure but just to be sure i'm going to thin my strip out until 0.6 millimeters so this is it 0.6 millimeters i'm going to have to anneal it because as you can see when i try to bend it it just pops right back so it's too hard for me to work with now i'm going to cut off a piece that i think that i will need for my stone and i'll anneal it and annealing is nothing more than heating up the metal until it's about cherry red and then quenching it in some cold water and you are doing this so your metal will relax and here you can see it bending through a bit and we almost melting it so keep your eye on the ball now that was a good save as you can see it's really really bendable now so this is why you anneal i'm going to pickle this and then we can continue meanwhile i am going to make a setting for my other stone and i always have these pieces of tubing laying around and i am going to use one of them to create a setting and i'm going to pick out a piece of tubing by eye if you drop the stone in here like this and there is a small outer ledge still visible about 0.5 millimeters on each side and this is the correct size tubing and i'm just checking to see if it's nicely right angled and i think it is i am using my ring clamp to hold this tube and i'm coming through it with my saw and if you just saw in a straight line in a steady motion you'll be okay so the bezel still is quite high right now but it has to go next to this one so i don't want it to fall away and we'll adjust the height when everything is in place and we can see how it's going to look together so i'm going to try and make the basic shape with my fingers and because i have annealed the material this really is very easy to do and now we're going to fine tune everything by getting in there with some pliers and following the shape of the stone more exact i set this little mark so i can see where my stone has got to go while bending after all this bending my material has hardened again and by annealing it i will make it soft again and if you would like to learn more about annealing maybe you haven't seen this video yet it's one of my previous tutorials in which i explain you why and how you should anneal meanwhile my piece is ready and i'm going to quench it in some cold water so i'm ready to shape this again i set the same marks so i know how my stone should fit in and i don't have to search i'm going to make sure that these edges will fit together perfectly so i am going to build up some tension here in the silver so that this opening will stay closed and i'm doing so by just folding over and moving around the silver a bit until it will stay together my stone fits exactly without very much light shining through or very much extra space and it will even stay in place when i pick the bezel up but i don't have to force it down so this is exactly right i am going to solder it still my most favorite job ever soldering i am coating my entire piece with boraxine it's a type of flux that not everybody uses but if you coat your entire piece you can prevent fire stain as well and that is why i'm over indulging in the flux it is quite handy once the structure of the borax scene changes it will turn a bit more honey-like then i know that my piece is ready to add the solder so that it's hot enough now i'm picking up some solder with my soldering pick and i'm adding it to my bezel and now it's just a matter of patience and flame control and if i use the heat of my flame just right the solder will flow in perfectly as you can see the bezel still is a bit too high and seeing as the stone has such an organical shape it is very difficult to line out the shape in your bezel so what i am going to do is i am going to file and send the bezel edge with the sea glass stone in place of course you have to be very very careful not to touch the stone i am using a dremel sanding disc this is something that normally wouldn't fit into a flag shaft but i just filed a bit away at the end and now it does fit and these things really come in very handy it also has a speed click system so you can change the sanding discs very easily so let me see if i can draw a line like this this is for the inside of my bezel that i'm going to cut out and if i can get in here this will be the outside line and the reason that i am using a marker is because the marker end has a very thick end and the distance will be the same all around instead of my dividers i am using the marker tip as a guideline for my cutting work [Music] i'm making a little indentation here for my drill to fit in and that way my drill doesn't slip away while i'm drilling i have lubricated my drill [Music] [Music] and i'm ready to cut this piece out [Laughter] i am going to make a small hole here where this bezel is going to fit in and i'm using a bird that's about the same size as my round bezel and i think it should go about here and this is all that i needed to do i needed to create a better soldering surface we're going to clean up these pieces and sand them so i can solder them together and sand all soldering surfaces and the places that you can't reach after soldering and it's time to solder again i have covered my piece in boraxine and heated it up and now i'm adding the solder and i'm adding it on the inside so i don't have very much cleaning up to do on the outside of the bezel later on i have used hard solder to connect the bezel the big ring that you are seeing and for this soldering operation i am using the middle solder so that will give me a bit more room to play with and i don't risk opening up my bezel wall i'm going to pickle this to get the borax enough so this is my id for the bill i have this 1.5 millimeters silver wire and i am wrapping it around a piece of tubing a couple of times this is enough i am going to use three of these rings to make my bail i have my saw blade on the inside of the rings i'm holding it down with my fingers but i'm making sure that my fingers aren't getting in the way of the saw blade i'm sewing like this and that was number three i'm going to look for them on the floor of my workspace and then i'll get back to you while i'm thinking about how i am going to add the jump rings i'll clean up my piece a bit [Music] so i've opened up the three jump rings just a bit and i'm going to slide them on here i need to close this one up a little bit because it doesn't stay in place and again i am starting by covering my whole piece up with borax scene and i'm getting a lot of messages that say you are doing this wrong and you shouldn't use this much borax scene but with metalsmithing you can pick and choose what works for you and for me coating it in borax scene will prevent me from getting fire stain and this really works for me so if you are okay with it i will keep on doing it and i would like to thank you for sending me tips and tricks and trying to help out because that is very kind meanwhile i can tell that my piece is reaching the perfect temperature for my solar to melt i can see it because the borax scene is changing its structure and it's becoming more honey like but of course i can also tell by the color of my silver you can see here that it's turning a bit orange or slightly red so i know i'm almost there and i am using soft solder and here you can see it again from this point of view because i never get tired of watching sold or melt i think it's magical and just one more and then we're done with this part and don't forget to quench when you're done because you will have to set the stone afterwards so it's convenient if your silver is a bit softer i think this is going to look really nice i'm happy what i decided to do for a bill i'm going to pickle this and then we are going to polish our piece so so i'm almost done but there are some places that i just can't reach and now you can take a piece of rope a cotton rope and add some polishing compound to it and go like this i am using these ready-made strips and i'm not even sure what they are called but i spotted them a while back and i just bought them and this way you can reach in those little corners that you can't reach any other way i am going to set my stone using protoplast and a shellac stick and i taped a bit of duct tape to the back of my pendant to make sure that the protoplast doesn't come up this way so the protoblast has softened and i'm going to set my piece in it and i'm just folding the protoplast over the edge and of course i'm leaving the top edge open so i can set my stone so my first goal is to make sure that the stone doesn't bounce around and after that i'm going to tap down the edge all around now i'm coming in with this bezel punch and a hammer i'm going to try and zoom in on this point because it is going to happen that you are flattening out a bezel edge and then all of a sudden you are left with a little bump here don't go in from the sides because you will only make a sharper bump and eventually even a fold go to the middle of the bump and gently tap it down to the sides i very roughly tap down everything around the stone just once and now i'm going to fine tune it and i'm being very careful not to touch the stone with my punch because then i might crack it i did it now let's add our tourmaline for this we're going back to my bench and i'll just clean up the edges i'll just clean up these edges before i add the tourmaline so that i can damage it i'm taking a 2000 grit sanding paper not touching the stone or the glass and just getting all those little dents from the setting punch out i think i'm going in with a bulbar first this one is about 4.5 i'm just making some room and here i'm going in with a 4.7 millimeters hardware and if you have a smaller size you can use that one as well just wiggle it around a bit but don't take a bigger size you can see the little edge it's made let's see how it will fit our stone and that still is a bit too tight i'm going in with the same bur but i hope you can see that i am moving it around a bit so i am creating a bit of extra space and now you know you have a perfect fit when you hear this the stone just popped in place take a look at it and make sure that it's leveled if it isn't take it out and adjust it with your bur and you can see me using a hammer handpiece here i can connect it to my fordham flex shaft and i find that it really works for thinner bezels but not for the heavier work i'll get this one out of the protoplast we'll give it a final polish and i will show you the end result thank you so much lisa for sharing this beautiful stone with me and i had a blast making a necklace for it so i finished my pendant yesterday but when i woke up this morning i took another look at it and i wasn't too happy with the glossy finish so i'm going to give it a matte finish by just rubbing over it with some sanding paper and i'll go for the 240 grit and i am not touching this part just yet because maybe i want to keep this shiny but we'll see in a minute so i think this really does look better with the stone and i'm going to give this a matte finish as well and after that we'll be done and here we have it our sea glass pendant please let me know what you think of the result and if you are going to make a pendant like this by watching my tutorial it would be awesome if you would like to share a picture and you can do so by sending it to me at info stoner we're at the end of this tutorial i really enjoyed working on this piece of sea glass i hope you enjoyed the tutorial and that you picked up some pointers here and there and thank you very much for making this such a nice place to work even though i am all alone at my bench it really doesn't feel that way because i get so much nice responses of you so thank you very much from the bottom of my heart you make this job really wonderful

Channel: Estona Metalsmithing & Jewelry Making Tutorials

Views: 29,606

Rating: 4.9816394 out of 5

Keywords: sea glass, seaglass, setting sea glas, stonesetting, cabochon setting, setting stones, pendant, necklace, jewelry making, estona, diy jewellery making, jewelry tutorials, metalsmithing, metalsmithing tutorials, how to make jewelry, at the bench, metalsmith society, goudsmeden, leren goudsmeden, edelsmid, zilver smeden, edelsmeden, vakschool schoonhoven, sieraden maken, share the knowledge, jewelry school, jewellery class, jewelry course, free jewellery courses

Id: j79imqXjg94

Length: 29min 7sec (1747 seconds)

Published: Sun Mar 14 2021