Pages From My Sketchbook

I don't sketch, ever! Ok, sometimes. But those ideas that I sketch, never actually make it into a real thing. It seems that once I sketch it, I got it out of my system and don't have any desire to work on it anymore. So therefore it's better I just don't sketch. Like these ideas for new rings:

Idea for a wavy, fluid ring design with a pear shaped blue topaz. The sketch still hangs on my black board month after I sketched. Still never worked on making it into a wax model or even cast in metal.

Elaborate design for fused gold on sterling silver with garnet sparkle. 

I am more productive without sketching. I do brood over new design in my head for days or weeks before actually trying to model them. I sometimes have a vague image in my head and then just start with a new piece of wax and just carve it out there. Once I get into carving the design changes a bit, which is good. I find new ideas when I model in wax. It's as if there is a piece hidden in the wax block that just wants to grow out of it. The wax block, heat pen and carving tools become my "sketch book". 

I have the advantage of working/ sketching in a cheap material like wax. If I screw it up or decide I actually don't like the design, I can just trow it away or melt the wax into something else. If I would do more fabrication work, I would start sketching more. It would be way smarter to sketch on paper before actually cutting into expensive metal. 

I also do not think I am a good sketcher. I just can't get those 3 dimensional shapes translated on the 2 dimensional paper. Sketching in wax stays all in 3 dimensions, so it feels more natural to me. 

To sketch decent one needs to stay in practice. At the beginning of my architecture career I used to sketch more and had a fairly good sketching hand. Now everything is done in CAD model and drawing software and I barely ever sketch anything. If I ever have to sketch now, it looks horrible to me. Gone are the times when I just hand the contractor a sketch of a detail I want him to built. Now I have to go back to the office and sketch it up in CAD. 

Wax model of ring for fancy cut sapphire

Once I am satisfied with a new design it goes into the next casting run and eventually will be finished in a few weeks time.

Please check out what other EtsyMetal members sketching up right now.

Rebecca Bogan - http://www.AdobeSol.com/blog Shirlee Grund - http://lichenandlychee.com/blog/ 2Roses - http://www.jewelrytutorial.blogspot.com Beth Cyr - http://www.bcyrjewelry.blogspot.com Kate Jones http://www.katejonesdesign.blogspot.com Erin Austin http://metalmusing.blogspot.com/ Michele Grady http://www.michelegradydesigns.blogspot.com Elizabeth Scott http://esdesignsjewelry.com/blog Su Trindle http://quercussilver.blogspot.com/ Evelyn Markasky http://markasky.blogspot.com/ ArtigianoJewelBox: http://www.artigianojewelbox.com/category/blog .

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.

Etsymetal Blog Carnival - Tool Nerds

EtsyMetal's Blog Carnival for April explores the tool topic:

Most coveted tool. Why? How would you utilize it if you got it?

I am a tool addict. Seriously! I do love tools. There is always something out there that can make a task easier, faster or just more fun to do. The joy of feeling a nice, beautiful, well crafted tool in your hand is just enormous. Well, most task in metal smithing can be accomplished by tools our ancestors already used. Nobody really needs more than a file, saw, torch and maybe some simple casting equipment like a self-built brick oven and a sling shot.  But hey, live is too short to waste time with simple tools if it can be done faster some other way. 

The last tool splurge I did brought me my casting equipment with a vacuum caster and a kiln. So thats covered. Next on the list would be a bench mate system to be able to hold those rings while giving me both hands free for the stone setting. 

If I really dream high I would love a 3d printer. One of those high resolution printers that built a wax or resin model that were designed and modeled in a 3d software. Those are still expensive. I would have to make 3d modeling my specialty to ever justify such a splurge. Until then I will stay with my hand tools and send out the 3d models to a printing house. 

One more affordable printer would be the Thing-O-Matic from Makerbot. It's definitely not a high resolution printer but it just looks nerdy enough to be a great addition to my studio.  But since I am short on space and have no time to figure out how to set it up and get a good use out of it,  I just keep dreaming.  I wonder if the cute blue bunny comes with the kit, hmmm...

Please check out what others have on their dream list:

Beth Cyr - http://bcyrjewelry.blogspot.com 
2Roses - http://jewelrytutorial.blogspot.com 
Elizabeth Scott - http://esdesignsjewelry.com/blog 
Tosca Teran - http://nanopod.wordpress.com 
AdobeSol - http://www.AdobeSol.com/blog 
wildflowerdesigns - http://wildflowerdesigns.blogspot.com 
Evelyn Markasky - http://markasky.blogspot.com/

Wedding Ring Prototypes

Wedding season is here and I am starting to get request from customers for wedding ring designs. I will  give it a priority over the next few weeks to come up with a couple option and new designs.

Here the first prototypes playing with a couple different textures that I made yesterday in wax. They are being cast right now.

1. Sponge Rings, 2. Dimple Rings, 3. Saw Cut Rings, 4. Chiseled Rings

The Sponge and Dimpled rings use textures I already made for other rings. Here I am using those same texture techniques to create narrower and less heavy rings suitable for everyday wear as a wedding ring.
The Saw Cut rings and Chiseled rings use new techniques that I am curious to see how they look in metal.
I will also concentrate my RAW designs on making wedding rings for the next few weeks. I hope by May I have a few wedding rings listed in my shop. I will offer them in silver, white and yellow gold options and in Palladium. Stay tuned.

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RAW 07/52 - Vow Ring

Just realized I never updated the bog with my more recent RAW submissions.

RAW ring #7 is a wedding ring with vow that reads: WITH THIS RING I SEAL MY VOW OF LOVE TO YOU.

The text is extruded and flowed around the ring opening. I have to figure out how I can squeeze the letters together so they overlap and would not need the ring bar to hold them together. Thats another week's assignment.

I am curious to see how the texture at the band top will look when printed in 3D and if the text is still readable when printed.

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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.

RAW 06/52

Good news was that Rhino came out some weeks ago with a free beta version 5 for OSX MAC and I had to give it a try. Since I am a total beginner anyways I can't really say  if it works any better or not. But it's nice not having to work on the window's version via Parallels.

This weeks ring was a spin off from the open strip ring I did  in RAW 03 to 05. It's a bit higher version and more sculptural. Since there are no plugins (T-spline etc) yet for the new beta version I just modeled it completely in Rhino. It actually was not to hard to model. I haven't tried to 3d print any of my rings yet. I am curious if some of those edges are to thin to be printed. I guess I will see when I get there.

The only problem I really had with the Beta version for MAC was that the render function seemed to crash the program. Therefor I only have a screen shot pictures.

Now I am only 3 weeks behind with my challenge. I guess I have to find some time this weekend and model rings instead of doing my taxes. It's more fun anyways.
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