Shinium - Brilliance by Design

A set of silver stacking rings featuring the famous "Amen break" More on  the Amen break here . Of course it's relatively simple to apply this technique to any other sound sample. Maybe the Apache break, or Funky Drummer. Or even something which isn't a breakbeat. 

The question of pickling jewellery seems to come up quite a lot. What can I use as pickle? What's the best? Short answer is that any acid will work to "pickle" (to remove oxides from after heating) copper or silver. Longer answer is that some acids are more effective, quicker, than others. Much longer answer is this video in which I test vinegar, citric acid, sodium bisulphate (aka pH down aka safety pickle) and phosphoric acid against each other. For some reason Blogger embeds video at tiny size, so if you'd prefer then  click here to watch on YouTube .

So, I make quite a few tutorial videos and people always say "yeah, that's cool but what if I don't have all that gear" Well, hopefully this video addresses that problem.

A custom request from a lady of excellent taste, asking for a spitfire ring. Challenge accepted! This video shows how to casting a spitfire using the Delft clay casting system. Delft clay is an oilsand designed for fine casts - it's a mixture of sand, clay and oil. The process is fairly straightforward but as you'll see, it's not as failsafe as other casting methods. I got it right second time though!

I was given a load of old sterling jewellery to make into something new. The video shows the first stage, to melt it down into useful ingots. Once poured, the ingots need cleaning to remove impurities that have come to the surface. The melt-pour-clean process may need repeating several times. Once clean, the ingots can be recast, or forged/rolled into sheet or wire. Casting video to follow soon.

My background is in software, specifically web development. I used to do both front and back end stuff, as well as sysadmin things. I worked with graphic designers a lot, some amazingly skilled people from whom I learned the importance of getting things exactly right, visually. Exactly right. Every pixel has to be perfect, every aspect of a design thought through carefully and then polished to perfection. I'm eternally grateful for the things I learned from those people. Programming and systems admin adds a different dimension to the art of "Doing Stuff Right", that of every case being accounted for and every exception or problem caught before it happens. Beauty takes many forms, both in terms of visual design and in software too. This focus on detail, on perfection, has carried over into my current work in the physical realm. Making stuff that is machine-perfect isn't so hard. Especially when using machines (although I don't have as many machines as I'd li...

Generally when joining metal I use sheet solder, which is economical and in most cases, easy and fast to use. But sometimes it can be a pain to get solder in place around a particularly tiny piece, so I thought I'd have a go with silver solder paste  instead. It's a bit more expensive but it lasts for ages. I'm starting out with a plain silver ring , to which I'm going to solder some silver and copper blobs. Blobby blobby blobby! OK, right. Here we go. Excuse my fingernails, I've been testing out gilding nails with copper leaf. It actually worked pretty well, this is a few days afterwards.. Dot punch to start with. Stops the drill skipping off the surface of the ring. Bzzzzzzzz. Only drill a bit into the surface, don't go all the way through. Repeat until lots of holes. This is fine silver casting grain, usually used for melting down prior to turning into other exciting stuff , but this shape is exactly what I want for this ring. Carefull...

I was asked by some friends recently if I could make them some wedding rings from electrum. Electrum is an alloy of gold and silver, and it's incredibly pretty. But it's kind of hard to work - the standard way of making a ring, by folding a piece of sheet or wire and soldering it closed doesn't work. While electrum is very hard, it has a relatively low melting point, so you can't use normal silver solder on it (also, silver or gold solder would show up as a visible join). I have fused a few rings from sheet electrum, but it's very hard to get a clean join - the ring ended up slightly asymmetric , which isn't always a problem but for wedding rings it didn't seem right. So, time to learn how to cast metal. I bought a Delft Clay Casting kit and got to practising. After a few goes I dived right on in to making the rings. It's a fairly simple process but an interesting one. First up, making a wooden former which is slightly smaller on the inside and sli...

I was asked about doing a tutorial on soldering. So here it is. Soldering is much easier than it looks - with a bit of practice you can be making bezels, joining bits of wire and much more. Main things to remember are clean joins and to heat the piece not the solder. Spending time getting everything nice and clean and properly in place before you get the blowtorch out is important. Notice how much time, even speeded up, I spend aligning the piece of silver in this video. I've heard the word "light-tight" used to check a joint is ready for soldering - if you can see air between the two bits of metal, your joint isn't lined up correctly. Some people say solder won't fill gaps, but it will. That's not an excuse to not having your joints line up though! This ring was only polished to about 800 grit (the  radial polishing discs  you see towards the end are awesome!) so it's still a little satin-y to look at. There's nothing to stop you polishing it al...