A Pendant for Heather

Here is another of my progress photo sets from a special commission I made this last summer.  You may have seen some of these photos on my Facebook page, but here they are in one lot, enjoy! 

The client, Heather, has three sons whose names start with A, J and K. The brief was to incorporate their initials into a piece of jewellery in a similar style to other pendants I have made, using green stones. Heather had helpfully done some drawings herself so I had a good idea of what she wanted. This was one of my interpretations, getting there but not final form yet. 

After a while we both settled on this design, with each letter clearly defined in silver strip. The extra metalwork takes more time and materials, and therefore cost a little more than other designs, but it's well worth it to get exactly what the client wants. 

I only started taking photos at this stage in the metal construction. I was using great big chips of solder (bad jeweller) but this surface with the solder puddles will not be visible in the finished piece. Lots of solder in this instance saves the hassle of cooling, inspecting, finding gaps, resoldering etc. until there are no gaps in the solder seams. 
It was pretty fiddly getting the letters just right. Teeny tiny faults in the quality of line or shape make the whole thing look awkward, so I took my time getting the shapes perfect. 

The metal is all soldered well in place. Here the top surface has been sanded off flat to inspect for faults in the solder joints. 

This photo is taken through my jeweller's loupe held right up to the lens of the camera on my iPhone. Here I'm rounding off the ends of the letters ever-so-carefully with the tip of a needle file. 

The obsessive part of the process starts. I have a collection of tiny green stones, picked one-by-one out of sand. Here I'm figuring out where to put them in this pendant. The base layer is garnet sand from off the beach at Orepuki. It's mostly black but with some other colours and tiny little natural garnets. 

I've poured in the resin and while it's still liquid, I use a saw blade (jeweller's size saw blade, of course) to poke around to release any bubbles and put back any stone or sand that have been disturbed by the resin pour. 

After a few days sitting in the warm sunlight on the windowsill in my studio, the resin is set hard. I sand it off flat using wet and dry emery paper with a little water in reducing grades of grit. 

Oh dear, a fault has shown up. Even though I had the metal perfect before the stones and resin went in, sanding off the top of the resin takes the metal down a bit further and sometimes irregularities are exposed, such as these. It's annoying, but I keep sanding until it disappears. 
The surface is sanded down to 800-grit paper and then polished on the bench polisher. To see what that looks like, go here. (This page I have doesn't let me put videos right in posts yet.) 

I have a collection of bigger green stones. Here I'm figuring out which one or ones to put in the gap. 

I've chosen stones for the gap and a bigger one for the toggle. Here I'm drilling through a stone underwater, using a diamond drill in the handpiece of my flex-shaft, which is fixed into a drill press. The water is essential for cooling, lubrication and carrying away the ground-up stone.

Check out this amazing stone. It's naturally heart-shaped green argillite with fossil worm casts all through it. I *think* (please let me know if you know more than me) that is from the Permain Brook Street Terrane, laid down as sand and mud 250-280 million years ago. The lighter green streaks are from where ancient worms who had ingested lighter coloured mud pooped it out in the darker green mud before it was metamorphosed into rock. 
Carving a hole and groove into an ancient, fossil-bearing stone initially felt sacrilegious. But I've decided that they are better being used in jewellery, even if it means altering them such as I have here. Fossil worm casts in argillite are actually quite common among the beach stones at Orepuki. I have a another couple of stones like this in my collection currently, and I have used a few more in jewellery. They are out in the wide world being loved and appreciated right now, rather than stowed away in a shoebox being too precious to use.

Plaiting the cord, at night, as usual. 

Attaching the toggle stone and making a loop in the plaited cord using a technique called "whipping." 

The finished pendant, photographed on some of the the concept drawings. 

Heather, the client with her new jewellery. She told me she loves everything about it. I love my job. (Photo used with permission)