So. Last part of my learning project.
I wanted to incorporate elements of both pendants I made before, which makes it difficult, because working with silver is difficult when you don’t have proper casting tools.
When you need to work precisely with silver? Forget about it.
That being said, it was design-wise that these incorperations were made. Still though, let’s do a little recap of what’s been done thus far:
First, I made two pendants out of maple wood, and stained them darker. I used lamb leather as a cord, and tied slipknots in them for readjustment of size. One pendant was arrowhead shaped, and the other…was…coffin shaped? I guess?
So. I like how they turned out – the arrowhead one in particular.
Next was my least favorite part. The silver one. And while it’s definitely the most fun to work with, it’s also definitely the most unforgiving.
I cut out a rough shape in wood in order to cast the silver, melting it in a crucible with propane torches. I used the same lamb leather cord with a slipknot that I used for the previous necklaces.
While it’s not terrible, it most definitely could have turned out better. But I digress – onto the fourth and final pendant:
For this one, I wanted to use a darker wood in order to better contrast the bright silver (colour combinations, yo).
My wood of choice was black walnut. A nice, dark colour, it stains brilliantly and is easy to work with. It’s also fairly durable. This is a colour comparison between black walnut and maple.
It’s sorta cool that you can tell how old the wood is based on the age rings. Those round streaks through the wood – the more of them there are, the older the wood is. Based on that, the black walnut is far older, because the rings are so much closer together.
So what I needed to do was cut this down to a rough shape. Unsure of what I wanted my final product to look like, I just started cutting and waited to see where it took me.
A rectangle. That’s where it took me. Good job, me ^_^
Anyways, next was sanding. As usual, this was both the longest and most annoying part of the whole ordeal.
Regardless, a few hours later, I emerged from my garage triumphant, holding aloft a wonderful piece of sanded wood.
So you remember the next step. Drilling! Yaaaaay!
…except my uncle took our drill to work on stuff. How. Rude.
So my dad decided to be amazing – he took one of his father’s old handheld drills. This thing was actually crazy.
Crazy drill in hand, I bore a hole straight through the wood. It turned out very nicely. Looks like the old drill still has it ^_^
So. My next mission, as you may well remember, is staining the wood to give it a richer colour.
I knew black walnut was a wood meant to take on a nice and rich dark colour, so I used the same stain that I used on the maple.
The result was… satisfying. Of course, I had to hang it up to dry before I could really appreciate the final product.
Now comes the tricky part. See, as I said before, I’m really incapable of doing complex things with silver without spending an exuberant amount of money. Thusly, I decided to take the wooden part to the hands of a jewelry store, and they put a ring on it. I guess they were fans of Beyonce.
In addition to putting on a ring, they also gave me a metal cord to hang it through, in order to properly get the colour contrast right. All-in-all, while I’m sad I didn’t get to do it myself, I’m quite pleased with the results.
So…yeah. Final product.
I’m pleased with the result, like I said. Black walnut stains to a gorgeous colour, and it looks good contrasted with the silver.
I’ve enjoyed being able to screw around with jewelry and sorta shape things to how I see fit. I like the creative freedom of that. I think that’s why I liked working with the wood as opposed to silver: you have more freedom, since it’s easier to work with.
That said – as always, open to any criticisms. Love you all – have a great summer break ^_^