sanity check cleared! whoot!

My second to last week. Unreal.

and no, i did not ride the ferris wheel last week for all who may be interested......

Since things were sort of grinding to a halt as far as projects were concerned, the week started out fairly uneventful WHILE building pressure in regards to the bench final. Monday we were given some “free” metal and allowed to root through some REAL stones (topaz, garnet, citrine, opal etc) and pick up to 7 stones (depending on size) to do a “creative” project. In other words, we’ve run out of things for you to do so find something TO do sort of thing. Since I already had a ton of my own silver already in ingot form and some rolled down, I opted to keep the bag of silver shot they gave me for some future endeavor. I thought about making it into an ingot and rolling it out anyway, but this way I have the option later on down the road to cast it if I feel so inclined.

Meh.

Long story short I just took the free stuff and squirreled it away in favor of practicing the ever loved freeform. Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday morning were spent practicing.
that’s all I did.

It went like this for two and a half days:
-Heat up ring (previous freeform from week whatever)
-Remove heads.
-Clean up.
-Solder in new heads.
-Heat ring up
-Remove heads
-Clean up
-Solder in new heads.
-Repeat
-Repeat
-Repeat

Wednesday after lunch we started tool prep for the final bench exam on Thursday. I spent two hours cleaning my files, re-doing my sandpaper sticks, installing new pumice wheels in multiples, cleaning up my pliers, refreshing my firecoat and flux, cleaning tweezers, and rearranging my bench so that only the tools I knew I would need would be exactly up front. I certainly didn’t want to be rooting through there looking for something when time is not on my side, you know? But you guys should have seen it. It was like we were prepping for battle or surgery by the way we took care to clean and line our tools up juuuuuuust so. It made me giggle a bit. About a half hour before the end of class, Don jumped in and we spent some time reviewing all 18 quizzes in prep for the final written exam this next Wednesday. This was the last time that we would have a regular class! So it had to be done a week early.

Final bench exam, attempt #1.….

Thursday we were allowed into the class 15 minutes early to start lining up things and setting up our benches. At 8 a.m. the head GJ honcho came in and told us the requirements of the exam and what specifically he’ll be looking for when he grades these. He spoke for about 5 minutes and congratulated us on meeting all of the academic requirements to be allowed to take the final exam. When he was done, Don stepped in and read the criteria for the actual exam, pointed out that this was a ONE day exam and briefly went over what Honcho had just said, and then he reminded us that he under no circumstances could answer any questions we have until AFTER we submit for grading. The minimum requirements that needed to be met by the end of the day were to have the ring sized, polished to a tripoli finish, four heads soldered in to the ring tastefully and in harmony with the structure of the ring, and the stones tacked into place. That was the minimum. And then he wished us the best of luck and put out the job box!

Our free form final bench exam bag consisted of one freeform ring, four stones (one oval, three RBC’s) , four heads and a chunk of sizing stock. I started by filing off the casting sprue, and sizing it up. I don’t normally have issues with sizing up, but I’ll tell you what… I was nervous. And when I get nervous, my brain farts and I cant think. Once I got myself calmed down to where I wasn’t shaking the solder off my pick, I got it sized and began clean up on it. By morning break I had all of that done and my goal was to have the heads soldered in by lunch. When we come back from break we only have an hour and 15 minutes until lunch, so that’s roughly an hour to get the four heads in place and accurate. Now if you have ever tried to slam heads into a ring, it doesn’t happen. You cant rush it. Not at least at my level. Every move is calculated, every piece of solder is places juuuuuuust so, and if the head is soldered in even the tiniest bit off, the whole ring looks stupid and you have to pull it and redo it. Well I got the oval head in (which was the biggest) just fine, and worked my way down to the smallest (which would be the first to melt you know). I wasn’t running into TOO many problems until I got to the last small head. Now, the requirements for this ring also include minimum contact for the heads on the ring. For example, a round head has to have 25% minimum contact with the ring OR 2 points of contact. Which wasn’t a problem until the last head. I got what I would say is 15% contact. So I obviously needed to get another point soldered in there. The problem was that the location of where I could add more solder was inside, underneath and around the fucking bend right near where the oval and the medium round head sort of met. Now, in order to get solder to flow you have to heat some stuff up. But you don’t want to melt things either. So getting what you want out of the ring involves some critical thinking and creative problem solving. So how DO you solder here here and here without melting the other heads?

Heat sinks. ridiculous ammounts of heat sinks........

Tweezers act as heat sinks and will draw heat away from whatever you’ve clamped them on to. So I dug around and brought out the arsenal of tweezers and clamped everything and their mother with these things. And about 10 minutes before lunch I had all four heads on! Wahlah!
Here’s a picture of what I mean.

By about 2:30 I had all of my seats cut and my stones tacked in, and decided that I would in fact NOT look a gift horse in the mouth and push through finishing in a half hour, but instead opted to get approval for meeting the minimum requirements, which were met, and I will be allowed to finish the final touches on Monday morning and submit for grading. So while I have MET some criteria, I will not know if I passed or not until I submit on Monday. I’ll try and post a tiny bonus blog Monday for you all!

My friend Domo Arigato Heather Roboto and I were so psyched that we all (WE ALL!!!) met the requirements that we did a happy robot chair dance. i have a video of it, but since i'm technology impaired, it's not going up. i tried. sorry.

Not one person in my class submitted for grading Thursday. We will all be back on Monday to tweak up some things and hold our breath while they grade. Wednesday we have our written exam and Friday, my friends, I graduate. My mom and step-dad will be here on Thursday and I’ll be super happy to see some family out here. They will be in town through Sunday so I may not get a blog up for you all until that following Monday. We’ll see. But there will be one!

Onward to my very last week my friends! This trip sure has been exhilarating, huh?
Until next week my friends, be well.