Spinster

I had my first “goldsmithing” class tonight. There was no gold to be smithed, only copper. Which is good, cause I like gold as much as I like diamonds, which is to say, not at all. We did all kinds of cool shit, including sawing, drilling, and soldering. I am super excited about this class — for those interested, it’s the beginning jewelry class at Nanopod.

So, we were given a small square of copper and from that, we had to create two pieces, at least one with negative space. In order to cut out the circle, I had to drill a hole into the piece and then use a jewelry saw (teeniest blade on earth, I’m pretty sure). The rest of it was cut out around the edges using the saw. Then I filed it so that the edges were smooth. I know that it’s really simple, but I think it’s representative of the things that I doodle: these massive organic shapes that start out as one thing, maybe a circle or a spiral, and then get added to as the class (inevitably) drags on.

After cutting out and filing the pieces, we soldered them together using a little torch. It was pretty cool. I remember when my mom used to do stained glass and she’d have the soldering wire and the torch and it looked like such a finicky process. For this, cause the solder doesn’t show, it’s way simpler, and we didn’t use wire; we used copper coupons. When I soldered the two pieces together, I had to let it get very hot before the solder “flowed,” and I intentionally left it a bit…dirty?…I don’t know what the proper jewelry term is. Anyway, I didn’t clean it until it was gleaming because I liked the way it looked.

I’m not sure if we’ll be able to add to this piece in later classes. If so, I was thinking of sticking a stone or two on it and then using it as a pendant in a necklace. Anyway, next week we’re making silver rings which should be fun.