My latest project was to make a bespoke sterling silver feather ring for one of my dearest customers.
It is made for her thumb. Here is the finished piece.
I managed to take some pictures of the process as I went along to show you so here goes… The first stage is to cut the basic shape for my ring
The ‘spine’ of the feather needs to be soldered onto the sheet metal base; this happens before everything else.
Then I start to file and shape my piece of silver and start the etching and repousse marks. I like to spend quite a while getting this bit right.
We next need to look at how the ring ends will meet, so I curl the metal around the ring former with the aid of my trusty raw hide hammer. In order to do this the metal needs to be softened (or annealed)
Once the shaping process is finished then the ring is polished using finer and finer abrasive polishers until a mirror shine is achieved.
Once I have made any adjustments in sizing (with a ring like this I often like to get my customer back for a fitting before I finally finish it), I need to oxidise the ring to bring out the light and shade in the metal. This treatment takes a short while, but then the polishing process happens for a second time.
This short clip shows the finished ring from all angles.
I was really pleased with the result and my customer was happy too. Many thanks for coming to my blog page. x