New Tool Love

I am in love... with a new tool. Don't know why I waited so long to get it.
Now that it's here with me, I can't imagine how I lived without it.
All this excitement is about this baby:

A GRS Bench Mate system with stone setter kit. 

The GRS Bench Mate basically a vice. I know, kind of strange to get so worked up over just a vice. But it makes my life so much easier. Rings stay put while setting stone. No more cramps in the hands when trying to grip tightly to a piece.  And there are so many accessories available. It can be converted into a bench pin, a soldering station or even a belt sander with some extra equipment. I did not get the belt sander or soldering accessories as I like to have my separate soldering station on the side of the bench. But the inside ring holder is great.

All the pieces just out of the box

A mounting plate gets screwed on the face of the bench and then the pieces just slide into the bracket. It's super fast to exchange the vice parts for the bench pin. (Sorry, it is kind of messy under my bench as usual.)

There is a inside ring holder as shown and a second vice type holder for clamping pieces.  The holders move easily in every direction or can be locked in any position.

I find the arm rest on the right a bit uncomfortable. Would be nice if it would be slightly padded to give more comfort for my wrist. But I guess could easily put a small leather or neoprene piece on it to provide just that. 

It was so much fun stone setting with this new vice that I set most of the rings that were piling up for weeks. 

Handmade or the Art of Getting Dirty

I do love to get my hands dirty. Let it be jewelry making, building little projects around the house or digging in the dirt in the garden. There is something very satisfying about using your own hands to create things, way more fulfilling than moving the computer mouse around. Handmade means dirty hands to some extent.

These hands are always rough, never really clean. Polishing compound seems to be burned into the skin pores. Soon enough I won't have any finger prints anymore because I tent to polish off the skin when finishing a ring. Hands that have cuts, nicks, burn marks and bruises. They hurt after a productive day in the studio. They get a treatment in a hot paraffin bath on some days if the pain gets too much (highly recommended mini spa treatment :)).

If I continue jewelry making for the next 30 years I imagine my hands to look like these:

Beautiful photo by Yellow Sky Photography : Jeweler's Hands - Hands that made jewelry for 35 years. These days they spend most of their time holding mugs of hot coffee.


PS: Love his sweater too, looks very comfortable.

Salt formations in my quench pot

The water evaporated in my quench pot and left salts in the water to form amazing patters around few silver drops.

I put soldered pieces in the water before it goes in the pickle pot to quench them.  The water is also used after pickle cleaning to remove the acid from the pieces. 

Pickel is a water diluted acid solution to remove oxides on precious metals produced from heating and soldering as well as glassy flux residues. When I cast new jewelry they come out black since the silver is covered with oxidation. Putting them in the heated pickle for a couple minutes removed all the oxidation and leaves them white.

Rainy Weekends

It's Sunday night and I can't believe I have to go to work tomorrow again. Weekends are always too short, even with having the Friday off. I am still trying to work only 4 days at the office, but it does not work out this way all the time.  I don't know why some people love to schedule meetings on Fridays... At least this time I pulled it off and had my 3 day "creation" weekend.

I needed it. Esty is keeping me busy and with the Spring Artful Home catalog out now, there were also some orders for the featured "Aquarius" ring.

Seems the catalog exposure really brings in sales. Since it looks like they want to put the ring in the next catalog too, I need to order more of those aquamarines. Wish they would choose another of my designs with stones that are easier to be sourced. I have such a hard time finding nice oval aquamarine cabs in the size I need. Luckily next weekend happens to be the International Jewelry and Gem show in the LA Convention Center. Already checked with my new supplier for these stones and he confirmed to bring a batch of those gems for me. Hope I don't overspend on other pretty little treasures again. I "hate" going to these shows. It's so tempting. Too many pretty precious things to admire and trade for credit card information. Some girls spend all their money on shoes, I spend it on gems.

Normally I try to do the wax work for the weekly orders all on Friday to be able to do a Saturday cast. But I switched it this week to get a head start on finishing last weekends castings and get a few rings out of the door. I also needed to go to downtown LA in the morning to get some more silver for all these new orders. Almost fainted when I saw the bill for the sterling silver casting grain. It's now over 40$ per toz, crazy! After  finishing some rings, I ended up starting on the wax work at 8pm. This meant having to put in a long night with vacuuming the investment for 6 rings at 2am. And then the rain started.

I realized I really should have checked the weather report before scheduling my casting for Sunday. It was poring cats and dogs all day! Living in LA, I almost forget that it does occasionally rain here. And when it does, it rains hard. My dog Lena did not get out of her bed all day long. She snuggled up in the pillows the entire day and only got up for food and the occasional look out of her doggy door. Wish I could do that too, the pillow part. I miss spending rainy Sundays in bed.

With the rain, every time I checked the temperature outside on the kiln, I got drenched. For better fume ventilation the kiln is outside under a little roof overhang where it does not get direct rain on it. But the overhang is not wide enough to protect me too. Fortunately the kiln electronics did not get affected by the humidity and it finished the 6 hour burn out cycle without problems and one wet caster. Now I have a few castings to finish over the week before next weeks new batch.

Creative disorder or how to embrace your messy desk (or bench)

I am the proud owner of a messy desk - actually two of them. One at my day job and one in my studio at home. I have to say that the office one does not nearly look as exciting with all the paper work on it than my jewelry bench covered with tools and half finished rings.

So this is my desk at  my corporate architecture job. The idea of a paperless office seems to be far, far away.

"An anti-anticlutter movement is afoot, one that says yes to mess and urges you to embrace your disorder. Studies are piling up that show that messy desks are the vivid signatures of people with creative, limber minds (who reap higher salaries than those with neat “office landscapes”) and that messy closet owners are probably better parents and nicer and cooler than their tidier counterparts. It’s a movement that confirms what you have known, deep down, all along: really neat people are not avatars of the good life; they are humorless and inflexible prigs, and have way too much time on their hands." www.nytimes.com

With that I am proudly saying yes to my cluttered mess and even show you some pictures of it.

This is a panorama of my studio. The work bench for metal work is on the left next to the window and on the right is the wax working set up and computer station.

I heard that people with messy desks may actually be less prone to procrastination. That's because tools are all in front of you, not filed away in a filing cabinet where they'll be easy to forget. Your desk may be messy, but at least you can see at a glance what needs to get done.
It takes time to organize. Some experts have suggested that the time it takes you to organize your desk can be more productively spent doing your job-and that organization doesn't save you a large amount of time to begin with. Disorganized people like me often claim that they know where everything is.


I actually do have some organization behind this mess, believe it or not.

Next to the metal bench is the soldering station with pickle pot in back, various fluxes , coal soldering blocks and third hand.

And right underneath in the file cabinet all tools for soldering.

The bigger torch I keep outside in the laundry shack, since I am always worried that there is a gas leak  and I would kill my dogs in the house. When I solder I keep the sliding door open for good ventilation.

The next drawer has finishing supplies: sanding paper and polishing compounds. I have to keep those locked away from the dogs, they have a sweet tooth for this toxic compound.

That is the drawer with the hammers and dusk mask. My dog Pele always has to check if he can "borrow" my rawhide hammer for a little chewing session. So this drawer should better be locked too.

Say hello to my two shop apprentices: Pele (lying on floor) and Lena (looking for some trouble). They are good to keep around for the occasional sweeping of the floors. When I am not at home the studio space is off limit for them.

Drawer with finishing tools for the flex shaft.  Those nail files are really great for sanding new castings.

My most used finishing and polishing tools I keep right on the table. Trying to put them neatly back in the drum would just be a waste of time.

Drum with not so often used finishing tools. In front there is a box with half finished rings which still need to get the stones set. I am always working on multiple rings at the same time. This allows me to keep working when one of the steps in the process requires to either put the piece down for a while to cool from the polishing, or it needs to go in the tumbler for a while or needs to be soldered and stay in the pickle for some time. I also get bored with some rings really quickly so this keeps me engaged, because I can switch between different designs. It's a bit of a bad thing when I really need to finish one order but rather want to continue working on a new design. On the left I keep a couple designs where I hit a dead end. Either I screwed it up, lost interest or they are bad castings and need to go in the scrap bin for precious metal recycling.

Over the wax table is a black board with current orders written on it. I typically have about 5 orders at any given time. It takes me 2 to 3 weeks to finish a typical order. Once it comes in, I mark on the board the customer name, ring name, size, date of order and where it is in the process. Once I made a max model, I will bring it to my local casting place. I typically get it back in 7 to 10 days. After that I sand, tumble, polish and set the stone. If I get more orders that I can put on the board, I create a quick spread sheet with all the info on it.

My messy wax table with ton's of wax shavings. In spring I decided it was time for a cleaning and totally wiped off the entire table. All tools where in their drawers, no wax shavings on the table, gem stones neatly packed away... After that I could start with any new designs for a week or so. It felt like having a writers block. The table was so clean I did not know how where to start.  After I finally got some orders and was forced to start, the table was messy again in one minute and the creative juices were flowing. Since then I keep the table in a state of what I would call the "just got up-stage". Everything is right there, I just need to plop down in the chair and start right away. No putting out tools, or finding the right wax type. This is very efficient for me, since I sometimes only have 2 hours at night to work on my jewelry.

My favorite tool: the electric wax pen. And the newest addition to the tool family is the magnetic tumbler. It saves so much time in pre-finishing castings. In the bottle is a wax polisher.

Once rings are finished they go to my in-house photo studio which I put up on my dining table when needed. A light tent and tripod is a must. My camera is a Nikon D50, which I put on macro setting. All rings are photographed on black back painted glass with a black velvet background.

The photoshop work and listing to Etsy and my web site is all done on my laptop on my dining table. I hate to sit on the PC in the studio. Working on good photos sometimes takes as long as actually making a ring. Something that does not really reflect in my prices for some one-of-a-kind pieces.  I only make money with rings I can reproduce when I can just use the same photos again and re-list. Unfortunately I really love making one-of-a-kind rings.

On sunny California weekends I move the office to my garden to catch some sun rays.











BTW: the clutter looks so much cooler if you use a hip Iphone photo app (Hipstamatic). Pictures from my Nikon SLR with its sharpness and true colors would just be too scary. 

"The best part about the messy desk myth is that it allows many of us to proudly view ourselves as creative geniuses just waiting to be discovered." (muse.tau.ac.il)

So if you embrace your messy desk, feel free to share your story and pictures.

Bound Magazine Arrived

This week the paper copy of Bound Magazine finally arrived from Australia.

It is so much better to see the page in the the real print than just the PDF.

And yes, my bench is pretty messy right now. I am working on way to many rings at the moment and really need a spring cleaning.

See also this posting for more info:

http://nodeform.blogspot.com/2010/06/feature-in-magazine.html

New Business cards just arrived before the show starts

I just got my new business cards and beautiful glossy post cards from MOO. They look great. 

I am so happy I used Moo this time for the post cards. I used to just print a couple cards on glossy photo paper. It looks so much more professional with the type on the back. The overall feel of the cards stock is great. I also did a couple of business cards in standard format and mini cards.
What I love with Moo is that you can upload up to 100 images, so you can have a different image on every business cards. It works so well at shows to have images of my rings printed on these business cards. People always take a bunch of them with different ring designs. This way they actually remember my designs even after going through a show of 300 vendors. It represents the body of work way better than a typical type face based card design. I am curious to see how many of these cards I have left after this weekend's show.

I am so prepared for the UniqueLA show this weekend. Just need to polish up a couple more rings so they look at their best. Tomorrow is setup time and then on Saturday at 11 am the show starts. Hope this one will be a great one.

I also finished a couple rings over the weekend. I set stones in the new Flow line rings. I really like the one with a tiny blue diamond. The blue sparkle and the silver go great together. I also finished a couple rings with those awesome colored peacock pearls. The large one in the textured ring looks really great. The orange ring has a tumbled carnelian in a low bezel setting and the ring in the front has a great Lodolite quartz stone in those 6 prongs.

Let's see if they will find a new loving owner in the next days.

Bad Days Happen

Yesterday was a bad day. I picked up castings from my local caster and a few had major problems. 


One ring lost it's stone during casting. This one had a beautiful marquise shaped sapphire set directly into the wax. Apparently it fell out during the casting process and never was seen again. Now it will be a real challenge to hand set another similar stone in the impression. Marquise shapes are so tough to set flush into the metal. They break really easy and its hard to get the fit right.


Another ring with a beautiful black diamond was at least fixable. Some silver covered the surface of the diamond, hiding the black beauty underneath. Thankfully silver is so much softer than a diamond, so the silver can be carefully polished away without scratching the diamond. 


But the real bummer was the casting of a rough diamond stacking ring. A quarter of the silver ring is totally messed up. It is porous and has pits all over. Something that can not be fixed. I will have to redo this again. Hopefully I get all the diamonds out of this screwed up ring. The really bad thing is that last week 2 more people ordered those raw diamond rings and one even has to be done in 18 karat gold.  Now I am rally terrified that all those 5 rings will go wrong when I try it again next week. If all goes well it should come out like this ring did. 

It is always a challenge using this method. I had some rings come out great and some others were ready for the scrap bin. It seems to be a 50/50 chance. I really wish I could afford my own casting setup to be able to experiment with this more. Unfortunately this equipment is really expensive and needs a large ventilated space. It also eats a lot of energy, so for my low production runs it would be not very sustainable.


The stone in place casting method allows to create some settings that would be almost impossible to get otherwise using the hand set method after the casting is done. Stone-in-place casting dramatically reduces labor costs associated with manually setting tiny gems.


In stone-in-place casting, a wax model of the jewelry piece is created, and the stones are set into the wax prior to casting. The wax model is placed into a flask and a fine-grained, heat-resistant plaster called "investment" is poured around it. Once the plaster has set, the flask is placed into an oven and heated until the wax burns off, leaving behind an empty cavity and the stones, which are held in place in the cavity by the investment. The burn out timing has to be adjusted slightly when stones are in the casting. The temperature changes have to be more gradually as temperature shocks can damage even the hardest stones.


The jewelry metal — normally gold or silver, since platinum's melting temperature is higher than most stones can tolerate — is melted and poured into the cavity, filling the space left by the wax. After the flask cools, an almost finished, stone-set jewelry piece is removed from the investment. Once the sprue is cut off and metal is smoothened, it just needs to be polished.
There are still limitations to what can be done with stone-in-place casting. For example, only certain stones can be used in this technique. Since the melting temperature of gold is 1,700 F to 1,800 F (927 C to 982 C), stones must be able to tolerate fairly high temperatures. Stones that change color when exposed to high temperatures, such as amethyst or blue topaz, or which will burn at these temperatures, such as pearl and turquoise, are not suitable for stone-in-place casting. The most popular choices, unsurprisingly, are diamonds, ruby and sapphire and synthetic stones, which are durable stones with a high tolerance for heat.

A Lovely Day in my Studio

After it rained last night, the sky cleared up again and it's another beautiful day in California. I am so looking forward to spending a lovely day in my studio working on some new ring designs.

I am so glad that I finally have space in my house to be able to work whenever I find a free minute and to have my dogs to keep me company.