I’m new to silversmithing, but I wanted to share a piece that I’m proud of. I made it for myself. If this is not the right place to post, my apologies.

I recently started a new job “teaching” silversmithing (fake it til you make it I guess) for a big dorky company. It’s a totally numbers driven business model, but one of the perks is that I have access to a bunch of silver and machines.

Forgive me if I’m not using the right verbiage.

I started with this kinda double bar thing, and split it. Then soldered on a “half round” kinda bar thing with medium solder for the chin bit. Then soldered on the balls with easy. And spent a good hour or so adjusting and readjusting to fit my face shape. I used a lapidary thing with water to grind down the big bits, then hit it with a dremel and polishing machine. It’s not something I would wear for a long time, but it’ll absolutely slay at the club.

For my next piece, I’m working on a nose cuff. Stay tuned.

Unfortunately, I don’t have step-by-step or well-organized photos or videos, but I do have a few!

This whole journey started with a YouTube video showing someone making this exact chain in gold. That inspired me to start searching for jewelry tools and watching tutorials. Eventually, I stumbled upon a complete workshop left behind by a deceased jeweler. I’ve been restoring the tools bit by bit until I was finally able to make this chain. Among the tools, I found some silver wire, lots of gemstones, and a bit of solder, but everything was completely mixed up and chaotic, so I’ve had to rely heavily on my intuition.

Here is a bit about the process:

Preparing the wire: I started by pouring an ingot and drawing it out through a drawplate to make the wire smaller. During this step, I learned the hard way that silver can crack and fray if you try to fold it back on itself instead of melting it into a proper single bar, so I had to restart.

Making the links: Once I had the right wire, I coiled it around a mandrel and cut the coils into individual links. Then I aligned the ends of each link so they would solder uniformly.

Soldering: Using the torch, I had to solder just enough without melting the whole link. About half of my links broke or developed weak spots during this stage, so I had to discard them, melt them down, and start all over. It was super labor-intensive!

Weaving & Shaping: Once the links were ready, I soldered two of them in a cross pattern to start the chain and began weaving the rest. After finishing the weave, I passed the chain through drawplates to stretch and round it out, constantly annealing it to a cherry-red color and quenching it in water (I had already struggled with metal fatigue early on with the rolling mill, so I made sure not to skip this).

Finishing: Finally, I sanded it, polished it with red and white compound, and washed it with dish soap and hot water. As for the clasps, I made them completely by intuition, using the few scraps of solder I managed to salvage from the workshop.

And here we are—just at the beginning of my journey, with so much left to learn and many more challenges ahead. Thanks for listening to my story!

Mokume-gane is the Japanese process of fusing silver and copper without completely melting them. I've done a couple of rings before but I was really curiuos if it was possible for me to make something a lot bigger. Turns out it is possible - just.

I took 4 pieces of copper and 5 of silver and alternated them in a small stack and clamped it all together and heated it to the point where the silver just starts to go liquid. I then took this billet and hammered it into a bar and twisted that. At this point the bar started to crack and tear so I didn't get more than one and a half turns in before I had to stop. I hammered the twisted bar flat-ish and rolled it into a sheet. After that I made it into the body of this little pill box. The lid is decorated with threads of copper fused and hammered into it.

All and all this was a pain to work with and took way too much effort. I wouldn't recommend this to anyone.

If I wanted to try my hand at some barrel beads like the ones in the picture. What gauge of silver do you recommend? I dont want them to be heavy and I would like for them to be affordable if someone wanted to buy them.