Powered By Blogger

Sunday, October 14, 2012

It Is Safe To Say: I Need Practice

Yesterday I stopped pussy-footing around, took the jewelry saw out of its packaging and attempted to saw a simple round-edged piece of copper for a ring. And the results are. . . I definitely need more practice. Much more practice.






See? A very simple pattern. Straight lines with slightly rounded ends. Easy-peasy! Nothing to it. Don't know why I've been so intimidated. All I have to do is open the package, install the blade and saw. I even looked up the recommended blade size for my 24 gauge copper-- 5, 6 or 7. No thing, man. Piece of pie, easy as cake. Only. . .






. . .this is how the blades came. They are bundled in smaller bunches with hair-thin wire-- to make them that much harder to get to-- but I do not believe they are bundled into different sizes. And even if they were, how would I know which size is which as the only significant number on the entire packaging is there on the lower left: 72 pieces. I'm gonna need every single one of them because. . .





. . .this is how far I got before I snapped my first blade. It only got worse. A lot of times the blade would snag on the copper and would only move in one direction, the non-cutting direction. Luckily I have a few blocks of paraffin wax (doesn't everyone? I mean, who hasn't made a candle or two in their lifetimes?) and running the blade once through it stopped that-- mostly.

I also read that you must hold the saw at 90 degrees, move the saw without putting pressure on it and turn the metal and not the blade around curves. What I found worked was putting the saw at a slight angle prevented it from sticking and sawed through the copper like butter without hardly any pressure at all. And no matter what I did around curves, the blade snapped and I didn't get any curve at all.




Six blades and one very frustrating hour later, this is what I achieved. I could have done it in 10 minutes with straight (although jagged) lines and rounded curves with my tin snips. I must say that even though the straight lines look pretty jagged in this pic, they are not jagged to the touch. Tin snips leave ends that will make you bleed. The saw will leave a much straighter and smoother line, once I learn how to control it.









Oh wait! It's Sunday and we need a silly:





Saturday, October 6, 2012

This Post is a Cop-Out

I bought a jewelry saw over a month ago. It is still in its packaging. I look at the saw and get hives, I'm so intimidated by it. Now, I have been intimidated by tools before, most notably the chainsaw. But I had time enough to make a concentrated effort to stop being a punk. When you're not working, you've got 24 hours a day to stare down your fears. With the saw, however, I only have to think about it over the weekend. Not enough time to build on fortitude and stop being a big pussy.

The saw still sits unopened on my makeshift bench (which I should really put permanent legs on) and instead of dealing with the fear, I am posting-- about kinetic jewelry. You like jewelry that moves? Well, I got links to stuff that'll exhaust you.




This little guy is pretty simple as for as kinetic jewelry goes. It can be found at Colleen Morgan's site. She's from Australia and I have to say I'm a little disappointed that there is no bouncing kangaroo involved.





Next up is this gear pendant. Now, I'm not one to judge (I am one to lie about how I don't judge, though) but this here is something of a cheat. It is laser cut by machine. However it is a machine owned by one guy who fabricates it all in his shop. So I'll give it a small pass. Now, if he'd made that intricate piece of jewelry with his very own hands-- well, I'd say he was a bit on the obsessive side. But he didn't so I won't.




Lisa Pavelkas has a lot of kinetic jewelry. I liked this bird the best. It makes me wanna make a pinwheel ring. Yeah. . . a pinwheel ring. That's. . . that's quite doable. Hmmmm-- uh-huh, yeup. . .. Thanks, Lisa, for the inspiration! Now if only I can get up the nerve to open the saw package. . ..





Need flappy wings to get your fingers going? Well, Dukno Yoon has got the ring for you. And a whole bunch of impractical but very kinetic jewelry.





Last, and definitely not least, is this very cool gear ring I first saw on my Facebook page. It's made by Kinekt Designs and I fell in love with it the very first time I saw it. Too bad it costs more than six hundred dollars. I'd like to think that some day I could create something as creative and beautiful as this. But then I look at my unopened jewelry saw package and I know better.