PART ONE
This post is all about the tools, some bought some adapted and some made up, to make a long long chain, ready for the party season. The main feature is a series of flower shapes, connected by twists resurrected from a past idea and connected by dozens of small soldered jump rings from Cookson. There is no catch, but it will go over the head twice to form a double row.
The flowers are made from pieces of tubing surrounded by jump rings and set on both sides with CZs. The tubes were sunk half way into a block and the rings, arranged around them open side facing inwards for soldering.
Once made up, a drilled piece of brass was used as a filing block, to standardise the lengths of the tubes, and then later as a firm rest, to push out the steel balls wedged in them from tumbling.
For the twists, I used larger jump rings made from thin wire and wound around the stem of a doming punch by hand. You will see that the stem has been drilled to capture one end of the wire. These rings were rather flimsy to separate comfortably with a saw, but my Tronex flush cutters made a pretty good job of it.
After soldering the rings were stretched to a long oval shape with circlip pliers and twisted with hooks, bent up and filed to size from coat hanger wire. Then they were stretched for a second time to make them more even and straight.
Finally, all the parts were connected and the stones set with polished round pliers, of which one side was filed to create a flat. The drilled and grooved wooden offcut provided a stable surface for setting.
This had me chained to the bench for days so to speak. I hope that what I have learned will be of interest to you. Dennis
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