All That Glitters Challenge – Making a Cuff Part II

I can’t believe that “All That Glitters” has been finished for 3 whole weeks! I’m having serious withdrawal symptoms and at a loose end on a Tuesday evening. That said, I’m also very relieved to have removed that self-inflicted pressure to produce a piece of jewellery every week! So here I am again, with my final instalment in my “All That Glitters” challenge series (for now!) – Part II of my Hawaiian Honeymoon cuff, only 3 weeks late!

Troubleshooting Part I

If you missed Part I, here’s a quick recap, but feel free to check out my post here! For most of the project, I was feeling pretty chuffed with myself – I’d managed to reuse a piece of copper from a previous week, saving me several hours of sawing with a small saw frame! I’d also managed to make the bezels and they looked like they were good fits. But, then disaster struck! After 8 hours of trying to solder on my bezel cups, I basically had a bit of a disaster zone:

Not pretty, right? I confess, there were tears and bad language at this point!

After I’d calmed down and my husband had talked some sense into me, I posted some of my photos on Reddit and asked the question “just how do you solder on six bezels to a cuff??” I’ve only recently discovered Reddit (yes, I know, I’m extremely out of touch!), but already, I’ve found it to be a friendly and helpful community! So here’s a selection of the really helpful comments I received (and you can jump to the full post, if you’re interested!):

• You’ll need a lot of heat – get another person to help with holding a second torch
• Make sure the whole surface is clean – it needs a good clean in the pickle bath before soldering again
• Try using the softest solder you have for all of the them so it could flow easier
• Try soldering two at a time because it could help you control them more finely
• Form the bracelet first, then solder the bezels – so that the bezels won’t deform when shaping the cuff (I knew there was a reason I did it this way!)
• Shape the bezels with sandpaper glued to the arch of the bracelet

Formulating a Plan

After digesting all of the hints and tips that people sent my way, I managed to formulate a plan in my head. It went like this:

• Remove all the bezels from the cuff
• Clean up the surface of the cuff – remove all scratches and solder
• Thin out the bezel wire to make it easier to set the stones
• Remake six bezels
• Solder on the bezels!
• Set the stones
• Clean up the whole piece

Simple, right?? As always… oh so wrong!

Removing the Bezels

It turned out that removing the bezels was just as difficult as getting them on in the first place. Which is quite frustrating since it took me such a long time to solder them on badly… Anyhow, I started by heating the whole cuff and trying to tug the bezel cups off with reverse action tweezers. None of the bezels would budge. I admit, panic set in just a touch when I thought I might not be able to get these bezels off!

Anyhow, I persevered. After pickling and cleaning the cuff again, I set about trying to remove a couple of bezels at a time – so just concentrating the heat in one place. Bit by bit, I managed to knock off the bezels until I was just left with the large one in the middle. Try as I might, I could not shift that one! In the end, I carefully sawed off the middle bezel. Yes, I know it’s cheating. When I was done, I ended up with this:

It took several hours of filing with a flat file and going through various grades of emery paper before I managed to smooth that out, and remove all the solder! But it was worth the effort because when I was done, it looked like this:

Remaking the Bezels

One of the things that concerned me when I made the bezels the first time round was that the bezel wire seemed really thick. I wasn’t convinced that I’d be able to roll the bezel edges over my stones, especially given they were all quite tight together.

Since I’d given myself the luxury of more time, I decided to do it properly. So I cut 15cm of the bezel wire, which was 1mm thick. I annealed it so that it was nice and soft, then rolled it through the rolling mill a couple of times. My rolling mill was very happy to get some use! I repeated this process a few times until I got the wire down to 0.5mm. If anyone knows how to keep the wire straight when rolling it thinner, please shout in the comments!

I still had some problems with making the bezels the right size, but got lots of good practice in! Hands up, I should have taken more care in getting them all the same height. I’m quickly learning that jewellery making is about patience and accuracy! Which means I just have even more respect for the jewellers who took part in “All That Glitters” because they produced beautiful jewellery in 4-5 hours at times!

Adding Some Embellishments

The great thing about taking my time with the project was that after rolling the bezels thinner, I actually had space to fit on my flower as per my original vision:

So, I cut and filed a tiny flower from a piece of scrap sterling silver. I really must remember to cut the detailed bits out whilst the flower is still attached to the main sheet of silver… trying to cut tiny petals out of a tiny piece of metal is extremely fiddly!

For the flower, I annealed it and then domed it. Then, I filed the bottom so that it was flat and applied a piece of easy solder, ready for sweat soldering. And yes, my hands were shaking the entire time in case I melted it!

Prepping the Bezels!

After a couple of days of prep, I was finally ready to reattempt to solder on the bezels! I applied almost all the tips that the folks on Reddit suggested, except getting new flux.

So I taped on some 240 grit emery paper over the top surface of my cuff. Then I carefully positioned the bezels in the places where they’d end up. I took my time and numbered each of the circular bezels 1 -5, and marked on an arrow to show the top. I filed them down until there was no light shining through between the bezel and the emery paper.

Once that was done, I used more emery paper and cleaned the surface of my cuff.

Finally… the Moment of Truth – Soldering!

Starting with the large oval bezel, I started soldering them on, bit by bit using easy solder for all six bezels.

The first bezel went on quite quickly. But… I struggled to keep the bezel completely flush. So, after my first pass, only half the bezel was soldered on. Undeterred, I cleaned up the cuff and and gave it another go. This time, I wrapped some binding wire around the bezel and the cuff to press the bezel down tightly. This worked and I got the solder to flow all around in a neat line! Hurrah!

For the round bezels, I soldered them on in pairs. Again, I used easy solder. I made sure not to direct my torch at the bezels that I’d already soldered on. This took me a few attempts because there were a couple of times when I forgot to sand the surface clean after pickling. Overall, it was a lot easier than my previous attempts.

I used my large butane torch and spent several minutes heating up the whole cuff, before redirecting the heat to the underneath of the cuff, directly under the bezels that I wanted to solder. Then when I thought it was hot enough, I move the torch to the top of the cuff and focused on the bezels.

I had one trouble maker bezel, which just did not seem flush with the cuff. I managed to solder on half and then realised that it had a huge gap! In the end, I got a pair of pliers and tried to push the bezel down. This did the trick and I managed to solder on the other half, along with the turtle’s head bezel and my flower.

I’m sure you can sense my relief! Here it is, pre-cleaning!

Setting the Stones

So after cleaning up the whole cuff – think filing, sanding and polishing, I was finally ready to set the stones! I was quite nervous – would the bezels be too big / small? How would I manage to get the bezel pusher into the really awkward areas?

Honestly, it wasn’t perfect! The Lapis Lazuli was smaller than the bezel. I really need to have a think about how I make that one next time, as my oval bezel mandrel is too small for this particular size of cabochon. A couple of my round bezels were too short / tall, so either the stone doesn’t look secure enough or there’s a massive amount of metal overlapping the stone.

But… I have succeeded! After weeks of frustration and tears, I produced my very first piece of jewellery with multiple cabochons!

It is most definitely not perfect! But wow, the learnings that I can take forwards from this project! I’m so glad I persevered!

My Final Word

So, after six weeks of “All That Glitters”, I’ve managed to complete five projects. I’ve never made the majority of these things before. Individually, they are far from perfect, but I’m so glad I challenged myself with this. It has pushed me beyond my comfort zone, and I have learnt a lot of techniques and new ways of doing things, as well as troubleshooting things that I thought I knew. I also learnt that I have a long way to go towards making professional jewellery, and even further to go before I make jewellery for a living. But for now, I’m enjoying the learning process.

I have one more “All that Glitters” challenge to do, which I’m going to put on the back burner temporarily as I’m about to embark on a year-long jewellery journey! I recently found an amazing Facebook group called “Let’s Make Professional Jewelry”. It’s a group dedicated to making projects from the book of the same name, by Alan Revere. I’ve committed myself to improving my jewellery skills this year, and plan to follow along with the group for the next 12 months! So tune in next week for my first project from the book – making a crochet chain! Watch this space!

Don’t forget to follow the series over on my YouTube channel!