Hell Week

Well, it wasn't exactly Hell Week since I have another 3 months before the Graduate Jeweler program ends, but damn was this past week tough, and my week coming will undoubtedly be even more difficult.

I had a great Christmas break, though I could have used an extra week. At the same time, part of me wishes I hadn't had a break. To break is to stop working. To stop working is to Stop learning. And then to forget... And so the first few days back at school were incredibly frustrating. My hands were shaking, my eyes seemed blurry. It felt as though it were day one. Just as I had expected and hoped, the instructors have begun to crack the whip.

The new week has begun... I am trying to take deep breaths while I work, and not "over work" myself. I have to remember to focus and not to lose patience. I lost my patience last week (first week back from break) when my friends Geoff and John were making too much noise for me to focus. Some of my most difficult challenges come in the form of other people. I dream of a day when I can work in near solitude. Picture me on 64 Acres in the Hudson River Valley; in a rustic barn converted into a jewelery workshop, with naught but the sounds of nature and my hands forming the beauties of gold and precious stones. This is where I take myself each day, floating through my imagination, as I try to calm my emotions, my tremors, my eyes.

We began a new project today...a pin!! I like pins/brooches....I feel they are truly a platform for the imagination. Of course, we aren't doing anything with our imaginations. Ours is a circle pin, which we have to set about 34 tiny round brilliants in. Circle pins were popular in the 40's and 50's, but so far are proving less popular in class. The synthetic spinels we're using are not uniform in size, so we have to "high grade" each stone, sorting them as we go depending on the sizes of crowns, pavillions, and girdle thicknesses. It's all kind of a lengthy process, culminating in a rather boring pin.

Before leaving for my winter break, I ordered some stuff from Rio Grande - a jeweler's supply catalog. Now I have begun to create a "jewelry studio" in my apartment. Hopefully it will get my creative juices flowing in preparation for my upcoming design program.

Never Have I Needed A Vacation More

Through all of my years of schooling, and even while working at the bank in NY, I never felt such a need for a break as I do now. Everyone is feeling it...shear exhaustion. A half hour before class ended today, in a state of worn-out delirium, I had to put my tools down. It's only been an hour since that moment and in 15 minutes, it's back to the shop for me. Back to the stress, the pressure, and the noise. Don't get me wrong now, I still LOVE what I'm doing. What I'm doing (and Loving) is a serious challenge. It is a constant test in patience, focus, and the utilization of the myriad skills learned over the past 3 months. Good God, has it been that long? It has flown by. Not a day missed, even when sick. Not a single tardy, my heart would not allow it. My mind is saturated with angles, measurements, temperatures, gold, silver, tools, tools, and more tools; stirring through my mind without much pause, but to think of gems and design instead. Ok...well...i'll have to continue this tomorrow....So begins another 3 hours.

{Next Day} Well, Night Lab was a success for me, as I was able to finish two projects and hand them in for grading -I got A's on both, though I would have given myself Bs. Passed out last night at 8 of the clock in all my clothes, and awoke at 5:30 confused and slightly dehydrated. It is now 3:30 in the afternoon, class has ended, and I am quite simply in pain. Spent the last 2 hours of my day hunched over a grinding wheel, shortening and re-shaping my gravers. It was almost a waste of time...I mean it needed to be done, but I'd been working all day on the fabrication of an oval head for about a 5x7 stone - attempting to make two silver ovals with a difference in size of about a millimeter (took a few tries), solder them closed (melted one, had to start again), shape them on a mandrel(making a perfect round far easier than a perfect oval), and file & polish the tiny ovals to near perfection (most people just order a pre-made head). These tiny ovals become the upper and lower gallery wires of the setting, protecting the stone as well as letting the light in. After that was through, I had to use a cylinder bur to remove 40-50% of the metal from the four "corners" of the ovals, making notches at ten degree angles for the prongs to fit in place. I still have to solder the prongs to these tiny oval gallery wires and being as it needs to be perfect, I decided to wait for a day I was better rested. So, I worked on my gravers and cleaned up my bench...and here I am, struggling now to formulate clear and grammatically correct sentences. I feel as though perfection this week in anything, is far out of reach. More to follow tomorrow...right now, I need a beer.
Well, today was the last day of class, and tonight I head back to NY on the red-eye. I'll be back to Cali on January 1st to finish the second half of the Graduate Jeweler program. As for that perfection I mentioned above...today I was aiming for that, and I'm happy to say I'm getting closer. I was working on a ring today with a gypsy set center stone and two flush set stones on the ring's shoulders. Setting these stones is an ancient art that should not be rushed. You must remove just the right amount of metal...it is like nearing the edge of a cliff..closer, and closer, and closer till where just one more tenth of a millimeter will make you fall. It is playing Chicken. And as always, the loss of focus for but a second, could spell absolute disaster..
That's all for now....I have to go pack. Merry Christmas and to all a good night.

Love of the Ah Ha! Moment

Well, it has been a long time it seems since my last posting... I am still alive, barely. Jewelry is not an easy craft to learn. We are given new projects every other day, regardless of how much of the last project we have finished. At the moment I am trying to complete 4 or 5 projects. Most of the class is in the same boat, and I have been told it is normal for people to be behind in the first two months. Essentially we are learning to solve the problems that Master Jewelers encounter all the time i.e. - weak solder joints (one of my rings fell apart last week because of my own poor soldering), and pits in silver caused by poor castings or improperly poured ingots. In all of our frustrations and with all of our mistakes, we are constantly learning. We have been learning all the possibilities of Repair including re-sizing rings, changing heads in and out of ring shanks, half-shanking, re-tipping prongs, etc.etc. This past week we were making silver chain. I was especially excited for this since I have always wanted to design and make my own chain...it's what sets jewelers apart. Soldering is a rather difficult process for me I confess, having been blessed with tremors in my hands. Actually sitting at the bench all day is also difficult, having been blessed with lower back pain. What an odd business for me to get into considering. Chain making is good practice for soldering though, it becomes methodically Zen; the step-by-step and repeat process of heating the jewelry, fluxing the jewelry, heating the solder into a .5mm ball, getting said ball onto the tip of a pick, and then placing and heating the solder simultaneously in just the right spot. All this while holding a scorching torch in my left hand, the pick in my right, and keeping the piece of jewelry steady in a third -hand cross locking tweezers. All this with the constant noise and commotion of the shop around me - the sounds of flex shafts grinding away metals, polishing machines humming in the back, the ultrasonic buzzing, the steam cleaner steaming, heavy hammers hitting anvils; not to mention the annoyances of my peers: slamming drawers, laughing to stupid jokes, singing with their headphones on, and asking stupid questions. So...basically, I have to take a Deep, Deep, Deep Breath, zone out all of the above, ignore reality, and get it all done. The challenges are intense, but when you see that solder flow cleanly and completely in a moment of somewhat chaos; it is like an orgasmic millisecond of enlightenment. It is the Ah Ha! Moment. The way I figure it is, my hands will stop shaking when they know what they're doing. When the Ah Ha! Moment becomes an Ah Ha! Existence.

I have now signed up for Applied Jewelry Arts program. My current program ends on Apirl 1st, and the AJA will begin on April 14th. I have met many people from the current AJA program, and I know that I can do better than them. The program will begin with Design - using pencils and paints to render metals and gemstones in jewelry designs. The Design portion lasts six weeks and concludes with a student choice award, which I plan on winning. After Design, six weeks of Wax Carving and Casting will begin, which with my skills of filing metals, I think will be easier to succeed in. After Wax will come Cad/Cam design software, which will be interesting as well, though I feel it is slightly "cheating". ~ Yes, cheating....the way I see it, goldsmiths were making fine jewelry hundreds of years ago without the use of electric tools like flex shafts and polishing machines. Hell, they were heating metals with blow pipes, not mini-torches. Sometimes, I feel like I'm cheating when I do something in 5 minutes that should take hours by hand, but I guess it's just a different time.

Deep Breaths, But Still There's Stress!

Things are getting a bit tougher on the Jeweler's Path. It feels like every day there is a new project, and every day it is harder to keep up. I had a Bench Test for the Florentine finish last week, which I completed however will need to work on the polishing of the shank. My Florentine finish came out very well though, better I'd say than most of the class. That being said, I am still slightly behind on a few projects. We re-sized one ring, which I still have to polish. Another ring, called Terri's Tapered Band, I still have to taper & polish. Today we got a new project called Rod's Rods, which involved filing round, brass rods into 3 and 4 sided, 2.2mm rods...not as easy as it sounds. I still have the 3-sided rod to complete, but can pat myself on the back for the the other one, which came out perfectly after 4 tries! Another project was Simone's Simple Band - taking that cast ingot and rolling it through a mill to the correct measurements, and then making a slim, flat band out of it. I then had to stretch the ring from a size 4 to a size 10. It's still not finished, as I now have to down-size the ring back to a size 7. After that, I have to begin, and hopefully quickly finish, Betty's Bypass Ring, which will include making a bezel setting for a black onyx cabochon. And, another project is being introduced tomorrow...deep breaths!!!! There is truly not enough time in a day, and far too many distractions in class.
Tomorrow I have another quiz...which so far I have an A-average in quizzes. I need to make a list tonight of the steps I need to take to get all my projects completed. This week is going to be grueling!!!!

My First Silver Ingot

This here is my first cast silver ingot!!! Oh, what a rush! It required the catching of breath when finished and carried with it the WOW feeling I remembered from sky diving. The process begins with a small baggie of silver granules - imagine silver Nerds candy. These silver pieces are first poured into the white plastic pipe, as in the top right corner of this picture. When the crucible is ready, i.e. "sweetened" with Borax powder and heated with the torch; the silver is poured into the crucible using the plastic pipe - like a decanter. The crucible is shown to the left of the plastic pipe - made from a ceramic material, it must first be heated with Borax until there is a glassy finish within. Next to my pinkie-finger you can see the steel mold that the ingot is cast in. Using thick, heat resistant gloves I first lightly oil the inside of the mold, and then clamp the two pieces of the mold so they are perfectly aligned. Both the crucible and the mold are heated at the same time with a torch that has a large "rose bud" tip, until a little smoke from the oil can be seen rising from the mold. The silver granules are then added to the crucible and the melting process begins. This takes about 10-12 minutes, until the silver first turns red hot (like charcoals ready for grilling) and then mixes together like mercury. Once the silver is all moving together, it is then poured quickly and evenly into the mold. The mold is then quickly opened, and the silver ingot quenched in water. ~ I suppose the excitement of this cannot be written well in words, but it certainly is exciting!
In other news, I had a good Saturday this past weekend. A couple friends from class and I went to a small Gem Show in Vista, CA just outside of Carlsbad. At one table we met a man named Robert who deal in gems out of Riverside, CA. He expressed to us that his business was more of a hobby, and so he's not out to make much money. Because of this, his prices for gems were more than reasonable, and his collection was very nice. My friend Jeff bought an UNTREATED blue topaz crystal for just $35!!! (GIA testing still to be done). The reason this was such a deal to those not in the know, is this....most Blue Topaz on the market has been heat treated to achieve that color. Your best luck of finding untreated blue topaz is if bought directly from the mine, but once the crystal passes through a few hands, treatment is more than possible, and close to guaranteed. The reason why blue topaz is one of the least expensive gemstones on the market is because there is a lot of it, and its treatment is fairly inexpensive. This all being said, Jeff's blue topaz still will need to be identified by the GIA as untreated and it is really just a specimen stone - not quite gem quality, but perhaps a tiny stone could be cut from it. If a stone were cut from it, and came with proper documentation proving its lack of treatment, it would be worth quite a bit more.
I bought one stone for myself, a 1.7ct Andalusite...about a 7x5mm oval cut stone with a light brown transparent body color, and good pleochroism of reddish orange & green seen all over the stone. = Pleochroism means that the stone has more that one color to be seen and usually the differing colors are seen from different angles. You may know of Tanzanite, which is a pleochroic gem. The best Tanzanite color is a purplish blue, similar to a fine blue sapphire. From some angles, the tanzanite will look more purple, other angles more blue, and sometimes, it can show colors of grey and light violet. How Andalusite is different, is that from the face-up view of the stone, all of its colors (greens, reds, browns, golds) can be seen reflecting at once!! I chose from a small selection of Andalusite. There were larger stones, but they didn't show as much color, and then there were stones that with my trusty Kassoy loupe in hand, I could see were more included (by flaws, but I hate that word). Now, I wish I had bought more of the stones. Andalusite is a rare stone in gem quality, but because it's not a desirable stone in the market, it's rarity does not make it expensive. It sold for $15 per carat, and I got it for $20. If it were not so rare in gem quality, I do believe that Andalusite could be a very marketable stone. It ranks around 6.5 to 7 on Mohs scale of Hardness, which puts it up there near Quartz. And with it's pleochroic phenomenon, it could certainly be desired, if consumers were aware of it. It's entirely possible that a new source of Andalusite could be found, and that it could flood into the market in the future. Because of this, it may be a stone I continue to study and collect, and eventually work into my fine jewelry designs. Ah, the future we will see!!!!!

Night Lab

Tonight is Night Lab at the GIA. Every Tuesday, those of us who need or want to do extra work meet at 4pm and work till 7pm. I took this picture last week after Night Lab. It is a hanging sculpture near the entrance to the Institute. What we have here is over a million carats of rutilated quartz cut from an 800 pnd crystal found in Bahia, Brazil in 1987. The crystal was set in this hanging sculpture when after 7 years of the cutting process, it broke in to 3 pieces. In the mornings, when I arrive to school, I can watch the sun rise directly behind this crystal through that long slender window. At night, as in this picture, the crystal is lit with glowing lights that cast shadows on the walls. In the silence of 7 o'clock; the energy of this crystal rebounds off the walls. I could swear I feel a vibration in the air surrounding.

So, tonight is Night Lab and another opportunity to see the glory that is this rutilated quartz. I will be working tonight on various tool modifications, as well as sawing out tiny shapes of copper. I am not enjoying the constant smell of copper emanating from my fingers, but learning to saw properly and cleanly is a necessity before going at that silver.

We had our first quiz today in class. I'm ashamed to say that I got 2 wrong and received an 88%. Oh well, there are 17 more quizzes, so I have time boost up that grade. The projects I've done have all been graded "A," though so far these projects have not been too difficult.

Oh Graver

This here, Ladies and Gentleman, is my 16/8 Graver. Gravers are for engraving - big surprise,
huh? Well, there are several kinds of gravers that I will be using, but this one is very much unlike the rest. On the bottom side or "belly" of the tool, there are 8 sharp, straight edges. When placed against the metal at a slight angle and carefully pushed, the graver scoops up the metal and creates 8 hopefully straight lines, fractions of a millimeter apart. If anyone has ever seen a Florentine Finish on a piece of jewelry, this is the tool that is often used to create said finish. It truly is easier said than done! In my practice with this tool, I have realized a few things. You should not push too hard or too deep - the idea is to create the finish, but to lose as little silver as possible. Be careful, but not afraid. You have to follow 3 degrees of Respect. Respect for the metal, Respect for the tool, and Respect for yourself. I find myself almost willing the graver to move - using "the Force" - but not to force the tool. It is exciting to watch the tiny curls of silver rise from the front of the graver, and to see the shining lines the tool creates. It is frustrating when I lose focus for but a fraction of a second, when my graver changes its angle but a fraction of a degree, and the lines skid off in a failing direction. This my friends, is something that requires great amounts of practice to perfect. One of my instructors, Robert, who studied in Switzerland, studied gravers for 4 years. I have only "scratched" the surface. I can tell that even though engraving is a frustrating art to learn, I love learning it, and will one day truly love knowing it.

It is now Thursday afternoon. I finished the Florentine Finish just after lunch, and began a new project - Terri's Tapered Ring. All of our projects have funny names...the names of our "customers." So far there has been Mr. Newmann, Mr. Richards, Bert, and now Terri. Terri's Tapered Ring begins with a simple unfinished brass band, or rather I should say "yellow metal band." The first step involves measurement - using our vernier calipers to find the width of the ring (7.2mm) and then dividing that by 2, we get (3.6mm), and then further separating the ring into fourths of each measuring (1.8mm). Using scribes, I carved fine lines around the ring, and chose a point to call the bottom of the ring. From there, I filed the bottom portion of the ring, nearing a required measurement of 3mm (though we are allowed a tolerance of +/- 2mm). The top of the ring has to be 7mm with the same allowance. My goal of course is to be precise! So far I am excelling in this project because of my eye for detail - using the fine lines carved around the ring as my guide, and following the silent mantra File, File, Measure, Measure, File, File, Measure, Measure... Other students have had to start over 2-3 times. I fear it as a possibility, but am still confident I can complete the project with just one band.
My day is over now... It's raining today, drizzling really, and the locals of Carlsbad/San Diego are freaking out. The radio this morning was describing how thunderstorms happen as if no one knows...apparently it doesn't happen much around here, and rain is unheard of this time of year. Still, it is nice...it feels slightly like home!