Filigree pendant
Back with my second project, a filigree pendant that I will give to my mother on her birthday (tomorrow).
I know it has been a while, but I don't work well under pressure. I only work under pressure.
Lack of inspiration during the depressing winter months I guess, but now that spring is here it will be easier to spend some time at the workbench.
On to the pendant:
Since I am a sucker for hearts I decided that this would also be a heart pendant.
I wanted to incorporate a gem into it as well so I made it a little bigger than my previous one.
The heart is 45x40mm sterling silver with a bezel set 5mm round aquamarine (bezel strip in fine silver) with a silver weight of 7.4g.
All was soldered with hard solder and polished by burnishing.
Techniques practiced:
Drawing wire, annealing and making filigree wire. Need more practice with all of them, especially winding the threads, it was not as tight as I wanted it to be and more than a few pieces were used for balling. Flattening wire with a hammer takes time, though my pasta maker at least makes it 0.4mm.
Soldering. Am getting the hang of it now, well, almost. I managed to melt the end of one wire but could shape most of it back again. Filigree sure needs a bit of solder to make the filigree wire stick to itself. Spent a lot of time soldering the heart since it consists of multiple elements.
Winding. Winding filigree sure made me swear a couple of times, I clearly need more practice. Since the wire was not all too tight sometimes it tends to split when coiled. The center round part I had to solder in stages since it wanted to pop out into a spring if I tried to push it into the design. Will also need to get me a proper pincer, fingers are too big for small things.
Balling. Melting scrap into balls is fun!
Burnishing. I burnished both with a brass brush and also with a burnisher as a polish. Last time I polished with my 3M discs but this time I wanted to see what a burnished look would yield (also it helps work hardening the silver a bit). Sure it looks more scratchy under magnification but to the naked eye it looks fine!
Gem setting. My first gem setting! I opted for a bezel setting since it would fit better in a pendant. The strip setting took a bit of bashing during all the soldering, twisting and burnishing so it is not perfectly smooth, but hey I wanted to show that it is handmade! *cough* Setting the stone correctly also procured one or two curses, and burnishing the rim to set it securely took a great deal of more work than I anticipated. It sits nice and secure though, I tried my best to poke it from the back.
Cleaning. Used a couple of silicone wheels and some unfitted, unsharpened gravers (yep) as well as my burnisher and a knife to do my best to remove spots of excess solder (not too much fortunately, it pretty much melted into the filigree wire) and tidy up the wires.
All in all, the finish could have been more scratch-free and I still have a couple of small specks of solder I could not remove. I need to get my gravers fitted and sharpened.
I also found it quite hard to get an even burnish on the setting. Well, practice makes perfect. For a first attempt it was not too bad.
Also, I need to practice making filigree wire, I must get it tighter so it won't split, right now it is quite uneven, some parts are really tight and other have visible gaps (most of those end up as silver balls).
TL;DR
/Andreas
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Originally Posted by caroleallen
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