Coughs, sniffles and earrings

I would like to start this entry to what I akin to an Oscars speech. I fell moderately ill the beginning of the week and I wouldn’t have hacked my way through it if it weren’t for the following:

• to roomie for hooking me up with Dayquil and cookies. yum.
• to my classmate who insisted on mom'ing me on break and forced me to drink EmergenC and a bottle of water.
• to the people that make Advil liquid gels.
• my left over supply of pharmacy issued pseudoephidrine (sp?) for clearing my sinuses
• my buddy in class who donated a pile of Kleenex to my runny nose.
• the makers of ultra soft Kleenex.
• my mom for calling me right about the time I was feeling like I needed some mom.
• the girl at Juice It Up who hooked me up with a double shot of wheatgrass because she felt bad for me
• my coworker that also insisted on mom'ing me and giving me yet another EmergenC AND two green tea teabags and attempted to give me more Advil.
• my classmates for not killing me for coughing on them.
• and my coworkers too.
• Progresso Italian vegetable soup.
• The roll of toilet paper I confiscated from the bathroom

Thank you. Thank you all for your support. This week couldn’t have happened without your teamwork and sympathy.

Needless to say, this week was sort of foggy with my head being mildly detached from the rest of me. One seat for me, one for my head.

I made my way through a few sets of earrings this week. Lots of assembling of pieces to form a whole piece. The first set of earrings we did consisted of cutting wire, forming posts and soldering them to the heads, then cutting the seats for the stones, setting the stones and shaping the prongs. Sounds simple enough until you consider how small the things are and how difficult it proved to cut seats on the heads while holding them pinched between your fingers. For the record I got a great grade on them, but this set DID come back to me for a correction. What’s that correction you ask? Well, under a 10x loupe, my instructor saw one miniscule grain of polishing compound, which I apparently missed on my final inspection, and I had to re-clean them for a CS grade. Other than that they turned out great. The next set of earrings, which took the remainder of the week to do by the way, were a mirror image set. Essentially we had to take a sheet of metal, cut and pierce the design out, form the earring hooks out of wire, precision cut and file them exactly the same (and I mean when you placed them back to back they had to look like one piece of metal). I wont try and explain how hard this is. Its hard. Every cut a made on one earring had me double checking the other to make sure the design stayed the same. Verrrrrrrry easy to deviate and take filing or sanding liberties and completely skew the design. And then once all of that was done we had to solder the wires on, and polish them to a mirror finish WITHOUT getting any drag lines from the polisher on them. Again, one of those tasks that’s interesting to attempt and harder to do.

I also had my second JMA bench exam. Up the ante my friends. This consisted of assembling and engagement ring from the ground up. So in the baggies our test came in were the following: one split gold band, one white gold head, one 5.25 mm round brilliant cut stone.

Here’s what I had to do:

I had to file each side of the band to perfect 60 degree angles to fit the 6 prong head. Solder the head on with no gaps, no pits and in the accurate upright position (ive soldered a couple crooked in my day). Then we had to cut the seat, clean the prongs up, set the stone, file the prongs to the appropriate contact level, shape them, then resize the ring to a dainty 4 ½. So here is when tell you that during the exams we can ask questions to our instructor , but he can provide us no direct answers as to how to do something. If that makes sense. So when I asked him if I should set the stone first then size the ring or size it then set it, he sort of smiled and said “I can only tell you that I would like the stone set and the ring at a 4 ½, so go in whatever order makes sense to you”. I immediately had flashbacks to a friend of mine resizing one particualr ring with like 27 tiny diamonds in them and having to crawl around the floor looking for them because they fell out of their seats because the ring went down so many sizes..... Anyway, i went with the resize BEFORE setting the stone and it provided me an opportunity to adjust the prongs and set the stone securely instead of skewing the ring in such a drastic size down and risk loosening the setting. I got the exam back on Friday and I got an “E” on the exam, which is the highest grade, but I do have some things I have to work on a bit. An E is and E sometimes though! i'll take it!

final product!

This week was Jerry’s last week with us. Apparently every 6-7 weeks or so we’ll be getting a new instructor. Jerry’s heading to finish up a class he started 5 months ago and see them off. I don’t know who we’re getting on Monday, but I hear he’s funny and challenging. I’m excited to have a fresh perspective and new set of eyes on my work. I hope I can continue to live up to my expectations and the new instructors as well.

me and Jerry!

On to week 8! (dang!) until next week my friends,

Be well.