I'll be in tri-focals soon enough.

“Experience is simply the name we give our mistakes.“ -Oscar Wilde

They say that when you practice something over and over, say a movement or a physical action, you develop what is referred to as “muscle memory”. which basically means you’ve done the same movement enough times that your body goes on auto pilot and your (in my case) hands just know what to do.

I’ll explain.

I find it amusing that I tend to look at things like jewelry, crafts, clothing, furniture, anything, etc and scoff at its craftsmanship or design and say “I can MAKE that, I’m not BUYING it”. I think anyone wit any creative streak IN them has at some point done this once, if not more frequently then we admit. And when you DO get the opportunity to make it yourself, you discover that not only is it more time consuming and expensive to do it your way, but it would have been cheaper and less stressful to just buy it. We never really analyze what goes into making something complex until our arrogance sits us down with the process involved and makes us give it a shot.

Monday found me face to face with a yellow gold circle pendant with 24 tiny gaping holes waiting for a tiny bur to make tiny seats for the tiny stones. This is one of those moments that I realized I’d taken for granted the skill and patience that goes into a project like this. Now, it seems like this would be cut and dry. Bur some seats, drop in some stones, tweak some prongs, wah-lah. Done.

Nope.

Here one of the requirements was to line up all 24 stones (2mm) and high-grade them and sort them out before setting them. Which means: I had to line up my stones according to the girdle thickness, table height, pavilion shape etc. And I had to do this looking through a 10x loupe. You can imagine how cross-eyed we all were. That took the better part of an hour just to do that. And you HAVE to do that because part of your grade involves setting them in order. I could write a small book on why they make us do it this way but I wont. Just trust me. After that was over, I got to bur a seat, set a stone, bur a seat, set a stone, repeat. And each time you do this you have to make sure that every stones table is even with the last stone. And if its not, then you tweak until it is. When I finally got all 24 stones set I had to show it to Doug. Once I got the grunt of approval I got to go back to my bench and cut off one inside and one outside prong to simulate damage/wear and do some repronging. I’m proud to announce that I didn’t melt anything and my repair job was awesome. And one of the prongs was a bit chunky, but you wouldn’t notice it unless I pointed it out to you with a loupe.

Repronging!

Tuesday through Thursday found us making earrings. Two pairs. More setting practice but this time with different stones. No spinells this week. The first pair of earrings were kind of cool. The first pair we did we a pair of radiant cut Moissanites which are similar in look to diamonds. The only thing that sucked was that they abrade pretty easily, so you had to be careful with your files when you shaped the prongs. We were given the heads for them so it was nice to not have to MAKE it, but setting them was a bit different since the cuts on the stones were sort of odd. I think they went out of their way to give us the stones that were cut by the half-blind stone cutter. Doug said to get used to it. So we did. Sometimes you just have to roll with the dice you’re given, right? The second pair were completely hand fabricated settings for a pair of round green marcasites. They looked like how you imagine pearl earrings looking, except with these hideous green balls glued onto them. Every single stone I got was drilled by the same blind guy who cut our Moissanites, so I had to make some adjustments to the stone and my setting of it. I managed at some point to split an entire ball in half trying to jam it onto my ill-filed post, so I got a new one which was delightfully drilled correctly. I then gleefully hammered the carcass of the split stone into dust. Jeweler therapy I call it.

Friday found me completely caught up with all of my projects and with nothing to do. SO I checked out a supplemental project. Yes, that’s right, and extra project. I don’t get any credit for it, but it gives me an opportunity to try stuff I haven’t without fear of losing a grade. Which is cool. So I checked out a pendant project which is involving me making a very precision setting for a channel set emerald cut. Which looked easier then it was. I spend all of Friday filing and fitting, filing and fitting. And by the end of the day I had the home for the stone soldered together. This is a piece in progress, so I haven’t set the stone, and that will have to wait until I have another down day. Maybe by then I will have learned how to channel set!

Four flush set stones!

There was a bit of sadness this week in my class. We had our first academic drop, and it was one of my “gang” unfortunately. I cant really go into detail, since all of the details were sort of personal for her, but my friend got dropped due to unsatisfactory performance. Luckily though this school has made some accommodations and is letting her roll back to the class behind us (which is in week 8 or 9 now) without penalty but she has to wait until they get to week 14. Anyway, it was sad this whole week not having her here and stranger to see her bench empty. But we’re happy that they’re cutting her some slack. The positive side of that is it was a wake up call for those still behind as they all figured out that the schools academic requirements aren’t really a suggestion, but actual requirements. So everyone’s been on time and in class this week which is impressive.

Other than that, its just the same old same old. Work, school, sleep. But I did manage to score a couple days off this week so it was an above average relaxing week for me. I did escape the apartment last night to meet up with one of my brothers friends who’s out here temporarily doing his Marine Corps thing and we had a couple drinks and hung out. It was really nice to see a familiar face around here. Its always interesting to hang out with a gang of rowdy military guys, toss in some beer and *wah-lah* you have an amusing evening. And oddly enough I always feel safe with these types of guys because it feels like you’re surrounded by a bunch of brothers. Which is cool.

Bench Exam #4

On to week 16!! Ten weeks of madness left everyone!

Until next week, be well.

pearl toast and afros

When I was at NIU working on my BFA, I treated myself to a couple ceramics classes. In 2002 in advanced ceramics I made a pig shaped planter which ,conceptually, is pretty funny. I modeled it after some of my cartoon renderings of pigs. And it turned out hilariously beautiful. Thing is, I never could find a plant bushy enough to grace it permanently UNTIL last week when I wandered into a gardening store to buy dirt for repotting. And there it was. The Irish Moss. For your viewing pleasure I give you ‘Fro Pig:

For many weeks I have found it unnecessary to post the long dormant “Hand Injury Tally” simply because I haven’t had any injuries. I was starting to believe that maybe I finally had a grasp on tool function and was possibly developing skill with them. What a concept! Skill! However, I managed to prove my self wrong this week. With a few fell swoops of idiocy I accrued not one, not two, but four minor lacerations (nothing major, have a seat.) to the hands! FOUR! Without further ado, ladies and gentlemen, …

Hand Injury Tally: week 14

• One mystery crisscrossed surface laceration on the back of my hand, probably a result of out-of-control saw blades. Who knows how it got there.
• One half inch long gouge on the outside side of my right thumb from accidentally dragging it across the pointy sharp painful part of my calipers. Felt really alive when I forgot about it and dipped the thumb in firecoat on accident (firecoat consists of boric acid and denatured alcohol. Ouch!)
• One quarter inch split on my right pointer finger, probably due to either a saw blade or file. Hurts.
• One stab wound courtesy of my brand new titanium solder pick.

BONUS injury story: One of my classmates this week managed to drill into the tip of her thumb. That was an awesome explosion of swearing. It was like the 4th of July with bad words instead of fireworks. She was drilling the pilot holes for some stones and instead of using something to hold the ring, like a ring clamp, she used her hand. Bad move. When the drill bit made it through the metal it continued on into her finger about a quarter inch. Here’s the thing. This girl’s tough. I consider myself able to deal with injuries well, but this woman just got up, washed it off, lobbed three band-aids on it and sat back down and kept working. No kidding. It was impressive. I sat there entire time with my mouth gaping open in disbelief (i know you can picture it). I strive for that sort of indifference to pain.

This past week we got to modify a gold ring shank to accommodate two heads for small 3mm stones and then set a pearl. A setting which, friends, involves nothing more than 2 part epoxy-ing the thing onto a rod. Simple enough I suppose. But simple’s not really the opperative word of the (or any) day today. The shady folks in the GIA project torture lab dreamed up having us half-shank the damn ring WITH the pearl attached. So, normally when you half shank a ring like this you would pull the pearl OFF the ring. Even Doug admitted that this was a bit heinous of a task and said "good luck, just dont toast the pearl!"....Why would you pull the pearl you ask? Its delicate. Anything can damage it. Looking at it cross eyed could damage it. So how does one half shank a ring with a pearl attached that would almost never happen in the field? You submerge it in water. What happens when you submerge a stone in water then hit it with a torch? The water likes to climb the surface of the ring and extinguish your flame. So how do you get two solder seams to flow on a ring that’s submerged in a tiny swimming pool with a torch that goes out every thirty two seconds? You put on a larger torch tip and fire that bad boy up as high as it will go and torch the hell out it and hope the water doesnt boil before the solder flows! I also took a tip form a classmate and used some tweezers to help conduct some heat and got those suckers soldered. The tweezers sort of acted like a water deflector. It worked. But it was tedious stuff. I’m glad its over but I’ll tell you what, I heard through a small grape vine that our 5th bench exam is a replica of this ring. Like, once wasn’t enough, so here it is again. Awesome.

Speaking of bench exams, we had our 4th bench this past Thursday. It was a day and a half project. We were allotted 9 hours to complete construction on a leaf shaped pendant with a 3mm set stone. Contents of the project bag were fairly predictable: one piece of silver wire, one head, one sheet of metal, some silver stock, a stone and a pattern. We were also given the parameters for the exam which involved a “job sheet” describing the piece and a counter sketch. And then the only instruction we were given as to how to construct this was a sheet of paper with 6 horribly rendered drawings of what it should look like. Think about the illustration-only assembly instructions you get with a bookshelf for instance. that’s what we got. And you know, ive said before that you cant ask direct questions during these things. But we were blessed with two previously made examples of the pendant that we were allowed to look at to sort of absorb the design. And both of the examples had design differences. So you sort of had to use your instincts to decide what would be aesthetically pleasing to look at and go from there. Anyway the exam was supposed to only be a day and a half. I got mine done in 8 hours and 20 minutes, but I’d say the majority of the class will be extending the exam into Monday. It was probably the most challenging exam we’ve had to date, simply because we had to hand fabricate this entire piece. We were allowed to take some creative liberties with the somewhat uninteresting design, so I did spruced mine up with some fancy filing and gave it some dimension. I think it looks good, but time will tell if Doug does.

We have a total of fourteen project books we have to go through in 26 weeks. We just wound up week 14 and we’re in book 10. That leaves us four more books for the next 12 weeks. You kind of get the idea of how ridiculous these projects are getting and how time consuming this is if you think about it. The project we start on Monday for example involves a circle pendant with 24 (TWENTY FOUR!) prong set stones. And from what I just read yesterday about it, it involves two microscopic prong replacements. Cant wait. So needless to say, they’re getting more challenging (as I expect) but I LOVE IT!! Love. Love. Love. It.

I also got my “spider” pendant and the gypsy ring back that I talked about last blog, so here are a couple pictures of the two. For the spider there’s a front and back shot, and the gypsy is just a quickie I took before turning it back in. enjoy!

To all of my friends and family near and far from me, I miss you all so much. But I think about you all daily and cannot wait for you all to see what I’ve been doing in person. I just feel so lucky to be here. I know I say that a lot, but I do. And when you have this joy and gratefulness in your heart, I think its important to let the people you love the most know it. So thank you everyone for the energy and good vibes and have a beautiful weekend.

Until next week, be well.

My my, time is flying.

Ok, so I’m aware that its been 2 weeks since the last post. I also realize that due to the amount of things that happen for me in two weeks that I cannot possibly elaborate on eeevvvvvvrrryyything in detail the coffee pot simply does not keep the coffee fresh that long So I will spare you the thirty-three chapter novel and instead touch on some highlights and we’ll take it from there.

We did more chains, friends. This time it was what my instructor referred to as “simple repairs” (implying to me at least that the possibility for it to be way uglier was there) and to get us motivated for the task we were treated to a bouquet of songs regarding chains… chain of fools, chain gang, unchained melody, unchain my heart etc. you get the idea. Pretty funny actually. It reminded me of homecoming time at my high school and they would try really hard to get the student body excited about the game/dance/pep rally’s by playing Queen’s “we will rock you” , which I still have a hard time listening to with out flashing back to my Flock of Seagulls/Tony Hawk hair and heavy steel toed shoes… Anyway, We got to pull damaged links and do repair work on three different styles: a simple chain (link looped through link), a double linked chain and a serpentine. Oh what fun that was. I believe I’ve mentioned that I dislike chains, but apparently this is a common unavoidable fact of life in the trade. Awesome. The hardest was the double link since trying to figure out how to put it back together correctly was the main issue. I’ve never felt so academically handicapped in my life. I dislike puzzles and math, and this seemed to incoprporate many of these fears. Suppose that I should get used to that feeling. All I am asking of you, reader, is to take care of your chains. And if they bust, buy a new one. Please.

I’ve completely lost track of how many projects we’ve done, but I believe as of this past Friday we were on 29 or 30. Or something. We’ve been getting into more complex projects containing quite a bit of hand fabricating. For instance, we’re working on and by working on I mean no one has completed this thing YET a pendant we call the “spider” because its got a spider design on it (so clever!) And a prong set oval fancy cut. Oh and its in a setting that we had to build from the ground up. As in: given a nice piece of wire and there you go. Make it. OH and its got a gallery back on it, which I can only describe as a layered dimensional piece. But its been fun. Challenging would be a good description. But fun. We’ve had the usual round of disasters and fear combined with stress and blood pressure fluctuations and we’re still standing. And, still working on it. So no picture of it yet. But here’s a picture of a classmates failed attempt at trying to re-prong her setting because she accidentally sheared off the prong tip (a valiant effort to not only exercise our new re-prong skills, but to save herself an additional half hour of work. Which failed miserably.)

Another highlight was the introduction of flush settings. This is where the stone is set flush with the surface of the ring. Which involves drilling and opening up the pilot holes of the ring, and then as calmly as possible burring a seat for the stone. In our case we were setting 2.25 mm stones. Four of them. And if you’ve done everything right you should be able to hear a faint click sound when it snaps in.

Jeweler Dictionary of sounds to listen for (in progress):
1) Click: stone snapped in just fine
2) Crack, crunch or something akin to a salt grinder: you damaged the stone, don’t look. Go for a walk. Cry.
3) Sizzle-**ping**: &%#@*, you just quenched the stone. Go for another walk. Maybe stop for martini. Cry more.

Happily when we received this project we discovered that we were given two rings. One was for practice, one for real. These folks here are no fools to newbie’s doing flush sets. So hack away we did at the first ring. And really, we all made honest efforts to do this right. We tried. Almost all of us got the first ring DONE, but its debatable as to the quality of that finished product. My first trial by error ring looks similar to this: (illustration courtesy of "paint" on my computer")

Now, the second ring went fine. I got a rhythm down and got all four stones set level and flush. I haven’t gotten this one back yet so I could be completely mistaken. Completely.
Stay tuned for progress.

One of the coolest projects we’re working on currently is what’s referred to as a gypsy style ring. Its a common style for men. The one we’re working on right now has an 8x6 mm oval faceted stone flush set on top with two 2.25 mm flush set stones on the side. This project isn’t too hard, but I’m excited about learning how to do this because its incredibly similar in design to a ring my dad wore that I would love to rebuild or duplicate some day, and up until this week, its construction was a vague mystery to me. Again, this is a work in progress, so no picture of the final piece, but here’s an example of what I’m talking about:

So this past Monday upon my return from a nice relaxing weekend in the desert, I was greeted by my classmates bemoaning the fact that 80% of the class got back this project we worked on (mentioned in blog 11) marked incomplete. Which is huge. It was the project that had the emerald cut stone and three 2.25 mm’s set in a pendant. So this was obviously not something I wanted to hear after my weekend off. I was a bit tense and not looking forward to re-doing this project. Much to my delight, however, when I opened up my bench I found a grading sheet wedged in there for this project with a grade of CS. I’m not gloating, but I was relieved that I was one of the three people in the class that executed this project successfully. I earned a few side-eye stares and under the breath mutters in jest when they figured out I passed the project. WHEW! That Monday we also (finally) got the results of our third bench exam back…. Doug walked around and handed these things back to us and was commenting to everyone as he went. Dropping off my neighbors piece he said to her “good job, great work” and when he got to my bench he completely came to a halt and handed mine back slowwwwwly. *insert moment of tension* then he said something I will never forget. He handed this piece to me and said “This was one of the best bench exams I’ve graded in months. Exemplary work.” and then proceeded to tell me as hard as he tried, he couldn’t find a single thing wrong with my exam. Thirty years of experience couldn’t find a flaw. I was flabbergasted. Completely. There was also a bit of humble embarrassment as my classmates gawked at me for the second time in twenty minutes. I cant tell you all how hard I try every project to perfect every move I make. And for thirteen weeks I’ve been trying to meet my goal of executing a flawless piece. And I managed to do it on a very nerve wracking bench exam. Who knew?!!

bench exam. crappy photo.

We also had our half way progress meetings. I’m in excellent standing, I have one absence, no tardies and a 90% quiz average. I have 100% completion on my projects. During our brief meeting he told me that he could tell I have a hard time executing some things, but I persevere and get the job done. He noted that perseverance is the key in this trade and if this is what I wanted to do, I was well on my way. He told me to expect to start out somewhere near the bottom of the proverbial totem pole (which I do) but that he estimates it wont take me long to move around and up.
I don’t expect miracles when I leave here, I don’t even expect to get my dream job yet. I understand that I could do this another ten years and still be the new kid. I am prepared to go the next half of this course as absorbent and receptive as I have been, and hopefully when I leave here my portfolio and my work will speak for my dedication and desire to work in this industry. I just want to be really good at this. And I feel like I might be ok.

on a side note, when i first started class i had a haircut. and in the back it slopes down to one side. its fairly rad. anyway, i had a classmate (as gingerly as possible becasue i think she thought i was unaware it did this) point out that my hair was "kinda crooked" in the back. and i told her (as a joke) that i was preparing to bring back the rat tail. to which she laughed. SO, i am. i have been. growing the rat tail i mean. and its more of a joke now. i told everyone i'm not cutting it until i graduate. so here's week 13 and its still around. i'd like to thank Barrie my awesome hair woman for stylishy incorporating it into my head flawlessly. Longer story short: my classmate Heather told me she was going to make me a scrunchy for my rat tail. and she did. its the worlds tiniest scrunchy. how cool is this? its orange with white polka dots, and its the first scrunchy i've ever owned!! me and charlie with our new scrunchies:

Until next week, dear friends. Be well.