jewellers tools | Eileen Moylan

What to do with unworn gold jewellery?

05.28.2012 by Eileen Moylan //

This week I’m melting down a customers gold to transform it into a new piece of jewellery. Many people disregard this option as they think they don’t have enough gold jewellery to recycle. But how many broken chains and odd earrings do you have that will never be worn again? This is a perfect way to de-clutter your jewellery box and also give yourself a guilt free gift of jewellery!

Here are some photos of the melting and re modelling process. I begin my weighing the customers gold, making sure I have enough to make the requested design. I’m turning this gold into charms for a bracelet.

For these charms I need a length of D shaped wire. This is done by rolling the gold through my trusty rolling mill to form a length of wire. It’s a slow process with the gold needing to be annealed ( heated to soften) after every few rolls.

Once the gold is at the correct thickness I cut it into the required lengths and start rounding it up. This also has to be done in stages and annealed as the gold wire is very thick for the size of the charm.

I will post pictures of the finished charms next week…

How to set a pearl

05.11.2012 by Eileen Moylan //

I’ve had a few busy days of paper work and admin so it was lovely to get back into the workshop today. I’ve got a few making projects on the go at the moment as well as some repairs. One of which is to replace a pearl in a white gold ring.

I decided to photograph my technique and go through how I set pearls. Pearls are unlike any other stones as it is one of the only times I will condone the use of glue! Glue is a jewellers nightmare, often I’ll be asked to carry out repairs on pieces that people have already repaired with glue. Before I can even begin to repair the piece I’ll have to remove all the glue. If I solder the piece first the glue will create a dirty soldering joint causing the solder not to run.

I begin by cleaning and polishing the ring as once the pearl is set I can’t put the ring in the ultrasonic cleaner.

Then I make sure the pearl is a snug fit in the setting. I’ve bought this pearl specifically for this job so it makes for a better setting. I also make sure the post of the setting has little grooves cut into it, this allows the glue to sit into these grooves making it harder for the pearl to slide off. Once I’m happy with the pearl and the way it sits into the post I can begin preparing the glue.

I use a epoxy resin as it sets better and doesn’t shatter like super glue. I mix it with a tooth pick and then using a broken saw blade put glue inside the drilled hole of the pearl. I then put the glue on the post of the setting. Be careful not to add too much as it will gather at the bottom of the pearl.

Once the glue is on both the setting and the pearl I gently fit the pearl to the post. I give the pearl a twist to make sure it is sitting correctly and also to spread the glue around the inside of the pearl.

Then I get my most valuable pearl setting tool… a clothes peg. I can’t remember where I came across this tip but it really is ingenious. You use the clothes peg to hold the pearl to the setting while the glue is hardening. It’s soft enough that it doesn’t damage the pearl and the spring means it can fit most pearl sizes and settings. I’ve drilled a hole on the top of this peg so I can also using it when setting pearl earrings. The post of the earring goes through the hole so the pearl sits snugly in the peg.

Well there you have it, my guide to setting pearls. If you have any handy jewellery tips I’d love to hear them.

Have a good weekend 🙂

About

Making Silver Earrings Part 2

05.02.2012 by Eileen Moylan //

Last week I wrote about a pair of silver earrings I was making for myself.

Now that the wires are in place it’s time to start soldering. I’ve filed the joint in such a way that they will fit together perfectly and won’t move during the soldering. Once I have them soldered, I leave them to cool and then clean them in the acid.

I’ve cut two lengths of .7mm round silver wire for the ear wire sections.

When I have the wires soldered on I can start filing the edges. I’ve decided to file the step between the silver earring and ear wire so it’s looks seamless. Once I have that done they are ready to be polished and of course worn!

Ta- dah!

Gold & Silver Stacking Rings Part 2

12.21.2011 by Eileen Moylan //

This is part two of a series on making stacking rings, to read part 1 click here.

Having made the silver rings I then needed to cut out the gold details and solder them on the rings.

Filing flat are on rings for gold detail

I begin by filing an area on the rings so the gold triangles will be able to sit flat on the bands. Then I cut the mark out the different size triangles on my gold sheet.

Marking out Triangles (and drinking tea!)

Because the gold details are so small they need to be held in a ring clamp when filing and cutting them out.

Once I have all the gold pieces cut out I place them on the rings to make sure everything sits nicely together and they will work in a variety of positions. I stick these on with blu tack so I can move them around easily.

When I’m happy with the size, shape and direction of each of the gold triangles I can start setting up for soldering.

It’s not a great photo as the sun started streaming in the workshop window. Once I’ve finished all the soldering I’ll post pictures of the finished rings.

Gold & Silver Stacking Rings

12.09.2011 by Eileen Moylan //

This week I’ve been working on a set of gold and silver stacking rings. I did a number of sketches and the customer decided on these rings with little gold triangles dotted across the three bands. I’m making sketch number 1 on this page with all the gold triangles going in different directions.

I’ve cut the silver wire and rounded it up to the correct size of ring. Sorry I forgot to photograph that part but if you want to see it have a look at the post I wrote on making a silver ring.

Once I have the rings set in place and the joint perfectly lined up I can being soldering. I begin by heating the entire ring and then once the heat is built up I can concentrate on the joint. I do this with silver as it is such a conductor of heat the joint would not hold the temperature unless the entire ring was already hot. The silver solder and flux is positioned on the joint and once it begins to melt I keep the flame on it. This is to make sure the solder runs into the entire joint and gives me a seamless joint. I let it cool down, pop it in the acid to clean the metal and then rinse it in water and scratch brush it using a brass wire brush.

With stacking rings it’s important that all the rings are exactly the same size and they sit perfectly together so I clean up the soldered seam and using emery paper clean up file marks on the edges of the rings. I use dowel rod with different grade emery papers to get into the inside of the rings. While it’s a slow process it’s best to start with the coarse emery paper and work your way down to the finest grade so you have less polishing to do at the end.

I also use a pig skin with polishing compound to give the flat edges a final polish before I begin the next stage of cutting out the gold triangles and soldering them onto the silver rings.

I’ll post photos of this next week…

Have a good weekend!

Busy Workshop Day

08.19.2011 by Eileen Moylan //

I’ve been busy with the business side of things this week so I was delighted to get back to the workshop properly today. The break made me all the more productive, I even took some photos to prove it!

Check out my new tapered polishing mop, it’s for polishing inside vessels.

I just took this photo to show off my new pink glitter pliers! Aren’t they amazing and you can’t misplace them on a messy bench.

The Travelling Silversmith

05.31.2011 by Eileen Moylan //

This is going to be a short week’s work for me because I’m London bound on Thursday. I’m going over for a friends wedding but I’m managing to mix business with pleasure as I’m going to spend Friday in Hatton Garden buying metal and tools. Hatton Garden is the main jewellery area of London and is packed full of places selling everything from diamonds to tools.

I’ve a list of things I’ve been promising myself for a while now, new hammers and stakes and a much needed sandbag. Hopefully I should come back with all of these and not exceed my baggage allowance! The other great thing about going to London this week is that it’s the start of London Jewellery Week and they have loads of great exhibitions and events organised. Most things are starting on the Monday I come home, but hopefully I might get a sneak peak of what’s on.

There’s also a brilliant silver exhibition on in Goldsmiths Hall called Mindful of Silver. The exhibition features twelve silversmiths each displaying a silver vessel. The really interesting thing about this exhibition is that the artists were asked to also exhibit objects that fuelled the creative process. Apparently there’s everything from torn envelopes to bleach bottles.

The participants were asked to make a vessel but they had to keep any objects, sketches and photos that contributed to the development of the work. It has gathered together a great line up for the exhibition with artists such as Theresa Nguyen and David Clarke. I’ve loved Clarke’s work since I was in college so I can’t wait to see some of it in the ‘flesh’. I don’t know which artist’s piece was inspired by the bleach bottle but I plan to find out this weekend. And of course I’ll write all about it next week…

Workshop Progress

05.09.2011 by Eileen Moylan //

Now that my vice is nearly ready for use I’ve been rearranging a few things in the workshop. I wanted to have the vice on it’s own bench so I could have it and all my hammers in one place. I’ve been designing and planning a small bench block that would meet all these requirements. I have no experience with woodwork but with a little guidance I was going to try and make the bench myself. Thankfully I hadn’t gone about buying the wood for my vice bench creation because I was in Ikea last weekend and I found exactly what I was looking for all ready to be assembled!!

I know most of you are thinking how can a flat pack piece of furniture be strong enough to hold that huge vice but the piece I found was perfect. It’s a solid wood kitchen block and with a bit of reinforcing it should be able to withstand all my hammering. It even has two slatted shelves to hold my hammers. At the moment the bench is on wheels but I plan to cut these off to make it more stable and also to make it the correct height for me.

Here are some photos of my vice on its new bench being cleaned. I put some cardboard underneath the vice to protect the bench from all the dirt and grease. I hadn’t realised when I started cleaning the vice how much dirt was hidden in the workings. The first photo here shows the amount of dirt that came out of the vice after it’s second cleaning. I also discovered that my vice was originally red!

Hopefully with a bit more scrubbing the vice will be ready for use in the next week…

My Vice

04.15.2011 by Eileen Moylan //

This post is dedicated to my new vice or vise to give it it’s American spelling. I say new but really it’s more like new to me. And here it is… ta dah!!

I’m sure some of you are thinking it’s a rusty, grease lump of metal propped up on a lump of wood but to me it’s perfection!
I’ve been looking for the perfect vice for a while now. I looked at new vices but none of them had the weight and strength I was looking for, so I went down the nearly new market. These were even worse, little blue vices that had completely rusted over and could never be brought back to life. I had my dad trawling through websites, and my husband driven mad as I rejected yet another vice. I know I sound like a right little princess but remember it’s a big angry vice I’m looking for not diamond slippers!

Well a few weeks ago my in laws mentioned there was a vice in the shed if it was any use, it had belonged to my husbands grandfather and wasn’t being used. (at this stage I’m sure you’re getting the sense that everyone knew of my search for a vice!) So last week when we went down to Kerry I saw the vice and it was perfect. It had the big wide jaws that I was looking for, it was really heavy so I could hammer away to my hearts content and know it wouldn’t slip or wobble under the pressure. It moved freely and the workings were in perfect condition. All it needed was a bit of elbow grease.

We brought it back home and now it’s in the shed waiting to be brought back to life. I went investigating the history and pedigree of my cherished vice. Thanks to my mother in laws great collection of photos I can show you it’s past life before being retired to the shed. As I said it started life in Ballylongford Co. Kerry and was used by my husbands grandfather. He died in 1986 and the vice found it’s way out to my in laws home place where it lived an exotic life in an Irish bog. It was welded to a bright yellow Lilliput turf cutting machine in case of any repairs and breakdowns (apparently there were many). I love that my vice survived over ten years attached to a turf cutting machine and came out the other end still working perfectly. It makes it’s minor blemishes and scars all the more noble! Now that you’ve heard it’s history I hope you be a bit more understanding of it appearance.

The Turf Cutting Machine in Action circa 1988

Turf machine (in transit) with the vice on the left

I’ll write another post when the vice is looking better but for now I’ll leave you with some more ‘before’ photos…

Cutting Silver Part 2

04.11.2011 by Eileen Moylan //

This is part two in a series of how to cut out a design in silver sheet using a jewellers saw. To see Part One click here.

Here are some photos of the piece once the paper has been taken off. I began by using my file on the rough edges and removing the scratches with emery paper. I then give it a polish on the polishing lathe.