Solder of Love: retip retip retip

I quietly suspect the reason that jewelers are mainly hidden in the back of the store is correlated in some way to the high tendency for swear words and temper tantrums -other side effects include (but not limited to) high blood pressure and spontaneous crying, which is of course, based on zero medical information.

A friend of mine and I were discussing possible improvements that could be made to any studio that would adequately accommodate said fits. The only thing we could agree on was a sound proof padded room. See, at the door, you’d have to take off your shoes, select the appropriate sized helmet and put it on, and then enter the room. In one corner there’ll be one of those ridiculous inflatable sand-in-the-base punching things they make for kids with an annoying primary colored clown smiling on it. Remember those? You smacked them and they came right back up. Awesome. You can punch it, kick it, slap the poo out of it. Whatever. And you can swear in there if you want because its SOUNDPROOF. Brilliance. And when you’re done having your tantrum, you can go lie in the corner that’s filled with piles of fuzzy blankets and teddy bears and cry it out. Tissues included. And when you LEAVE the room, a small tray pops out from the wall with cookies and warm milk on it. HOW outstanding would that be? And you could literally apply this in any work situation! Go ahead, sweet reader, imagine!

Moving on

Based on what I just wrote, im sure that you can take a guess at how this week went. The week started off relatively similar to the other weeks, only that we had Monday off. So the first day back was a quiz day. This quiz we took was one of the hardest to date. Im not going to bother you with my score, suffice to say that I passed. I knew before I looked at the scores that I didn’t do as well as I have been, so I made the necessary adjustments in my head to prepare for it prior to seeing it. Which helped me avoid aforementioned crying. Ive discovered that my expectations for myself here are far higher than they have ever been in my entire life. I have set this standard for myself that doesn’t give me much room to stumble or fall or make mistakes, although I know that these things are inherent to my success. So when discussing my quiz with Jerry, he quoted someone and said that you’ll make a thousand mistakes before you do it right. Or to that effect. I don’t know what it was about what he said, but it made me feel better.

We made split bails this week. some call the rabbit ear bails.

I was working on mine and I was to the point that I was going to solder it to the head, and I thought “something doesn’t look right”, so when I showed it to Jerry, he handed me another piece of stock to start over. Nice. Turns out my bail was big enough to slide on to one of those thick Run DMC rope chains.

Also on the schedule were a series of repairs to “BeBe Anderson” (again, all projects have names, like customers). Jerry started this lecture by saying that if you walk into any of the classes that are further along and just say “BeBe Anderson”, you’ll hear swearing and see people throwing things. Encouraging. So the basis of this was we had to “simulate” prong wear by filing down two prongs (intentionally damaging our own work!) and file away a third completely parallel to the girdle of the stone (try and keep up, dear reader). The one that we filed away we had to rebuild using stock in the shape of an “L”. hence L prong. Or that’s what he called it.

So far:Two retips and an L prong.

In the course of this re-tipping, one of my classmates was tightening his stone (he was allllllmost done) and the prong completely buckled to the side.

See:

The international sign for a buckled prong is now represented in our class by tilting ones head to the side.

How did I do you ask? Well. I got through the retips, I did the L prong. All was (notice “was”) well until I realized that I now had three juicy prongs and one emaciated prong. So I talked it out with Jerry. And the consensus was that it would be far more aesthetically pleasing to look at with four equal prongs, but it wasn’t necessary to do the 4th unless I wanted the practice……. Of course I wanted the practice. Long story short, I got the 4th one done, and when TIGHTENING MY STONE, hear a faint crack. Yes. Crack. it’s the quietest most horrific sound anyone in this industry has ever heard. That crack was my stone. DAMMMMMMNNNNNNNNIT! Anyway, I learned how to reset stones this week too.

I was prepared to leave this week with my head hanging and my proverbial tail tucked. I felt like I learned so many humbling lessons this week, and have vowed to work harder and study as necessary to keep ahead. And I’m trying not to be too hard on myself in regards to any stumbles I may have. But you know, I got the boost I needed at my 6th week satisfactory progress review! I have no absences, no tardies. I have a 100% completion rate on my projects which he said was unusual to have (whoot!), my quiz average is 93% (would have been higher…..), I soared through my first bench exam, I passed all my counter sketching… things look good! REALLY good. And the best was when he said that he could tell by my work and the questions that I ask that I really want to be here, and that students like me are what makes teaching worth it to him. It was a really sweet moment, a grand ending to an otherwise challenging week and makes me look forward to the next 19 weeks with hope, clarity and resolve.