I'm not in love...but I am excited!!

[Petal]

You should have asked him if he wanted a titanium and diamond pick, cos a friend of yours has one with his name on it!

In my mispent youth I used to have rude dreams about Robert Plant and I love the sound of him with the Krauss woman.

I was thinking of mentioning it, but I am not quite sure what Geti is up to with this titanium and diamond pick... is it for him and if it is, why hasn't he sent it to him?? He did look in a bit of a hurry tho. and he whizzed by so quickly, that I didn't have a chance! Yeah, Alison Krauss and RP do sound SO lovely together, don't they. We've been fans of AK for years now and would love to go and see her in concert. He's pretty good too but I prefer the stuff with AK.

xx

[lesley]

It's fascinating reading about your experiences, Barbara - thanks for sharing.

Your enthusiasm for fine silver is so palpable it gives me a little lift inside. Thanks even more for that.

[Solunar Silver Studio]

Crumbs! I didn't know I had such power!

But that is just it you see...if I can give you a long distance lift...think how light my step is as I open up my 'studio' in the mornings when I've got some fine silver work to do!!

I have a fairly large stock of fine silver jewellery completed now - enough to make a decent display at a few house parties anyway - and apart from a couple of commissions to finish for next weekend I haven't got much on my 'to do' list, so I might devote myself entirely to Argentium next week and see if I can fire the PASSION!!!!

[lesley]

I know you have to work at relationships but this should be the honeymoon period (or maybe the wedding night?) so perhaps you and A will never have that fire. You can still be friends though.

[Jayne]

Beautiful chains Barbara,
Really elegant and classic
Thanks for the tips as well,
J x

[MuranoSilver]

Love those plait rings and wonderful to read somone elses experiences with Argentium.
Nic x

[CDW Designs]

Yeh, maybe Su'...It just reminds me of making jewellery with paperclips!!

Anyway - here is my days production...lousy photos as usual but none of it has been finished of with a tumble or a polish as yet. I need to find out if I can tumble in the same shot as I use with fine silver. The Argentium blurb says that you should use dedicated tools for Argentium to avoid contamination...but I don't really understand the reasoning behind that one yet. More research needed!! I've not done a catch of any kind with the bracelet. I might just try an S shaped one to test out the Argentium's strength when it has been heat hardened. Lots to learn - lots of experimenting to do!

Attachment 489

Attachment 490


The first 2 rings I did didn't work very well as the sawing to size dislodged a couple of the wires and made the soldering a bit of a trial. I finally sussed out a technique for the third one which I am fairly proud of! You can hardly see the join with magnifiers on - but you can see the line across the top with this super enormous photo!! Not bad though!!

Attachment 491

I am totally amazed with the strength of these rings though...considering it is only 0.5 wire! And they haven't been heat hardened yet!

Love the rings, I think they look great! I'd have one of those rings for sure.
The necklace looks very effective too.

[Solunar Silver Studio]

Thanks for your encouragement everybody! I worked on my commissions yesterday and am devoting today to Argentium - with just a smattering of pmc if I find the time!

It really is the weirdest stuff!

I still haven't really got to grips with annealing yet. Or I don't think I have. I have tried the permanent marker trick...but I wonder if it only really applies to Sharpie...cos my cheap imitation vanishes before any changes of colour or springiness. My best efforts have been achieved by getting it to a very dull red with a fairly slow flame and keeping it there for a few seconds. I give it a few seconds to cool a bit before quenching it...perhaps I shouldn't quench it?...might need air cooling. Anyway...it is certainly softer but it is still too resistant to get a really tight wind on a mandrel. I have only ever made my own jumprings out of fine silver so I don't know how easy it is to wind annealed sterling silver. Can you get a really tight wind?? I am now working on trying to assess the state of annealment (is that a word??) by watching the wilt of my springy winds off the mandrel and trying to match the colour of the best wilter!!

Anyway. Logic dictates that after annealing and winding and cutting you need to pop the grey/black rings into the pickle before going on to fuse them. But with all my faffing around with annealing I began to notice that the more it was heated the more the greyness vanished - in places anyway. And experimenting with balling up a bit of black wire and fusing a bit of black wire to a ball of AS showed that is happily performed with out any flux or any other encouragement. So I thought I would ditch the pickling stage and see what happens trying to fuse grey/black AS rings without flux. Definitely a counterintuitive move!!



I am doing hoooooge rings by the way 1.4ID and 0.7 wire. The four on the left of the top picture had already been fused before I thought it would make a good piccie. But you can see the original colour of the rings by comparing the four on the right top picture. Carole is right!...you don't have to heat the whole ring...just the join...soooooo much quicker

I have found that the fusing seems to work better if the join area is not actually on the block. (This is a brand new block from Cooksons - only used for the first time on Saturday and only for Argentium - but it goes black as soon as a flame is played on it and smells like burning wood!!! Do they all do this?? I am wondering if the burning off fumes are affecting the forming of the germanium on the surface of the AS?) Anyway - I have positioned the rings so they just overlap the edge of the block...and you can see how much slump you get with Argentium and this is just heating one tiny area of the ring!! So if anyone has plans for anything big remember it needs real support!!!

So - the fusing worked in seconds - no flux - dirty looking rings!!! And you can see how bright the fused area is!! All the rings in the bottom photo have been fused.

It's weird I'm telling you!! WEIRD!!!

[Solunar Silver Studio]

Just been reading this article over lunch. It is probably the most comprehensive article on Argentium I have found so far and it has answered a lot of the questions I was asking myself this morning. Anyone interested in working with AS in the future might find it useful

[Ganoksin] Road Testing Argentium Sterling

[Di Sandland]

That's a good one, eh? Duly bookmarked and thank you