My brain is frying. My body is exhausted. But I couldn’t be more fulfilled if I tried.
Monday (if I remember correctly at this point) we were allowed to finish up that three-parter project, Mrs. French’s Gifts. After lunch we were introduced to channel set earrings, completely hand-fabricated channel set earrings, mind you, which didn’t look all to difficult, which is usually a sign that something is about to go horribly wrong because overconfidence will kill your work immediately. In that job bag were two strips of metal, one silver, one gold, a piece of silver wire for the posts, two pre-manufactured gold posts and some friction backs for the earrings. Oh, and four fake diamonds. Making the settings for the stones beckoned my precision filing skills, which were rusty. Which became evidently clear after I made the first setting, which listed to the left. Lesson here is if you do not file exactly straight and your file even so much as angles the wrong way for a fraction of a second, it changes the way the metal folds. Anyway, after my first failed attempt, I managed to get four heads to agree and be uniform in size and measurements. I soldered on the posts just fine and prepared to cut the seats. Now cutting seats for a channel set involves taking not-so-much metal out of the side walls of the earrings and snapping the stones into place. I just want to say that the seats I cut for these stones were unnecessarily huge on the first earring and consequently my stone danced around in the seats like soul train when I tried to hammer the walls down. I have also discovered that my reciprocating hammer (for the uninitiated, its essentially a tiny jewelry jackhammer) sucks ass and is worn out. So I borrowed Dons hammer and let me tell you, the soul train dance party ended. Those stones aren’t going anywhere unless I release them from the headlock I placed them in. Im still not done with the earrings WHY you ask? Because …
Wednesday afternoon (which is half a day before the 7th bench exam p.s.) Don launched us into YET ANOTHER fu**ing freeform remount project never mind that NO ONE was done with the earrings. None. So Wednesday we got to sit through another video and lecture on remounts while side-eyeing our still unfinished earrings. After the lecture he turned us loose to start the freeform, which no one checked out because we wanted to finish the earrings. Which I STILL did not get done by the end of class because I had some decent clean up to do on them.
SO
Thursday we had bench exam number 7, which was ANOTHER mothers ring. This ring wasn’t too bad because it was only four rounds, and the setting we were given for it was burnish finished, so the clean up on the ring was easy. We only had to size it up, clean up the ring and set four stones. We were given 4 ½ hours to complete it, and I finished mine in three hours and ten minutes. WHOOT! It was a really simple bench test and we were all pretty grateful for the break. Here’s a picture of the thing (in the bag because once its in the bag, its done)
Friday I went back and forth as to what I should be working on. Do I finish up these earrings or do I start in on the free-form? Being at 100% completion allows me at this point to decide if I want to even DO a project because I can afford to skip one if shit hit’s the fan. I discovered I could literally skip every project from here on out and still get out of here at the minimum 75% completion to graduate. But then I remember how much I spent to get here, and I forget that idea. But the options nice. So I set the earrings aside in favor of the free form, since its relatively similar to our final bench exam. I figured that I could use this time to get more acquainted with the freeform and get over my fears of remounts. So that’s what I did on Friday. I started the free form and by the end of the day I had two of the three heads soldered exactly where I wanted them. but its still not done and niether are the earrings....
The bad news is he’s only giving us the first part of the morning (up to break) on Monday to work on these and then heading into project 51! So I am prepared to call into my job on Tuesday to go to night lab if I feel like I may fall behind.
In other news we also started lasers this week. OMMMMGGUHHHHH they are the coolest things I have ever had the good fortune of touching. The laser welder can fix anything. I cant do much to describe then in detail because I’m still thumbing through the 3000 page handout on laser frequencies and trying to figure out all of the knobs and buttons. But damnit I think im in love. Its like a harmonious blend of art and science. And I can weld stuff together. So this week we’ve just been getting to play with it to see what it does, but the next three weeks it’ll be in the class and from what I understand we’re going to be using them for a few projects. I’ll keep you posted and try and get a picture of it in action for next week!
Oh friends. Its so hectic. Its stressful right now because the heat is on us, we’re the senior class and its just crazy the expectations of the instructors at this point. We have a few working weeks left and then finals. And somewhere in there we start platinum. Which im looking forward to. I don’t know. Its nuts. Totally nuts but I truly love it, and love what I do. So the journey my life has taken me on to figure this out has been worth it. Totally.
Until next week, my friends, be well.
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