Metal texture

[Beckaboom]

Hey guys! So I'm a complete newcomer to silver jewelry making but I've seen this texture people have been using alongside a patina to make a night sky (I've attached a photo) I was wondering if anyone knew how to create this texture? Thanks!

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[CJ57]

Hi Becka welcome to the forum
You might have to ask the original designer, it’s quite an interesting abstract with a lot of skills going on there. They could be large balls soldered on, but there is some riveting and also some innovative stone setting on the night sky

[Dennis]

Hi Becka, and welcome to the forum.
I guess you are asking about the background texture. Most experienced jewellers will have a rolling mill, and this texture could be made by rolling sheet metal with sandpaper, or fabric , or one after the other. They could also have used a custom metal plate.

If you have a motor, you can make something similar using a medium frosting wheel Cookson 999CCQ.
Failing that you can use a very slightly bent ball burr and play it lightly all over the surface until you have an even result.
To bend a burr, hold it with pliers, heat until red and while red bend the neck very slightly using more pliers. it will then run eccentrically like a little hammer.
To save wasting silver, always practice with copper first. Dennis.

[ps_bond]

I'd use a textured punch, personally.

[CJ57]

I’ve enlarged the background it looks really gritty. I’ve heard of grating metal to give this sort of texture but never done it myself

[Goldsmith]

Do you have a hammerhead attachment for a pendant drill? if so you can grind the hammerheads into various shapes that allow you to hammer textures onto metals, This photo shows some of the textures I achieved with my hammerhead attachment.

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James

[alastairduncan]

This piece has the feel of being engraved. The way the engravers work is to remove the background, some use engraving tools some use burrs, and then stipple the background. This can be done with a hammer and punch but many that use the pneumatic air assist engravers or the hammerhead attachment that James mentioned, have different punches to flatten the background and texture it with different textures. Engravers also use inlay techniques for the addition of different coloured metals without solder. You can see many examples of this type of work on hobo nickels.

J H Ranger - https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCv-4XTNp5S-GGTlXpn-AGig
Steve Adams - https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCN67HaadZDvHQHjVxYsfxPA
Roman Booteen - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P8BaCvm8e3o

[Beckaboom]

Hey! Thanks everyone for the information, I've spent today messing about with texturing using some of the suggestions given here and got some awesome results. Alastair thank you so much for linking those YouTube videos it sent me down a rabbit hole of engraving videos. I ended up finding a video about stippling using a small round burr and it's exactly what I was looking for so I can't thank you enough.

[alastairduncan]

Sorry about the rabbit hole, did you see the mad hatter ;-) I'm pleased you found the info that needed :-)