Electroforming

[misspond]

Strictly speaking there's no smithing in this piece, but there is a little bit of forming/hammering so hopefully I won't get chucked out

I had this big spectrolite that didn't look like much and I didn't want to spend time setting it in silver. As my new experiments are with electroforming in copper I decided to set it in a floating bezel and try something I'd seen - using blobs of latex to stop the copper forming over an area to create an "open window" effect.
So the stone was sealed with about three layers of clear nail varnish, then edged in conductive paint. Conductive pain was applied to the back of the stone, and then latex blobbed on. The stone is then stuck to the shaped and hammered copper surround with superglue and that join painted with conductive paint.

I took this photo during a check up whilst the copper was forming.

I went to bed and in total the piece was in the electroforming solution for about 15 hours. I scraped off the latex and then used acetone to get rid of the untouched conductive paint underneath as well as the layers of nail varnish.

Photographs were taken this morning in sunlight, no filters, and the spectrolite glows - the best angle for orientation for the front means that the wearer can flip it up to show whichever side is being used as the back and it glows just as beautifully.





This is another string to my bow with my recent inspiration from the arts and crafts Macdonald sisters and although the eforming process is long and requires a different patience to that of smithing, its a totally fascinating and today a very rewarding experiment.

Deb