PB Cohen Creations

I'm sure my postal carrier thought he had won, since he was able to put this small box into my mail slot. It fit on his side, after all. But the whole back of his side opens up. My side has a small frame around it for the door. Just barely doesn't make it through. Fail.

So I taped a post-it note to his side of the box, and pushed it right to the end. Hopefully he'll bring it to the house tomorrow.

And then I can play with my new shiny things. 160 perfect silver circles, and some polishing pins.

People who know me personally would be surprised that I spent some time on Valentine's Day making a heart. I am cynical, at best, and have never (well, hardly ever) celebrated a day marked by greeting cards and idealized expectations, romantic or otherwise. There were several Saints Valentine, after all, at least one had his head chopped off on "Valentine's Day," and we have Chaucer — not a saint — to blame for the "love" associated with the day.

Nevertheless, though perhaps in reaction to all the modern commercialism of the day, I made a heart. Out of silver. On Valentine's Day.

Take a close look, though, by clicking on the photos. It is a stylized heart, not a traditional shape; not flat, not evenly rounded; bashed repeatedly with a hammer; "dirt" (well, planned oxidation) is showing despite some shine; and it looks like it almost got melted at one point. Well, actually, it almost did. No cupids or fluffy bunnies here.

And on the back, hidden unless the wearer chooses to reveal it, the ever-so-slightly-twisted phrase: BECAUSE I SAID SO.

I can imagine related phrases:
* Because YOU said so.
* Because SHE said so.
* Because HE said so.
And then the options for personalization:
* Because [insert name of loved one here] said so.
* Because [insert name of dog] said so.

So what do you think? Is there a market for these? Or it is just my twisted personality that makes me think it's so funny? The pendant would come with a fine 18" silver chain. About $35-40.

It turns out that a photograph of stainless steel shot is pretty dull, but if you really want, you can click on this image for a bigger version:

I love my stainless steel shot, and have been known to rub my hands lovingly over the tiny pieces as they dry. (Too much information?) But no longer. One thing the bigger version of this photo will show you is that I'd taken all the pins out of the mix. Just the other day, I put them back in — and it turns out rubbing your hands over a mix with pins in it is very prickly, so my weird habit is over.

Lots of jewelers use stainless steel shot in mixed shapes as a tumbling medium to bring a high shine to their jewelry. There are many different brands of tumblers you can use (either vibratory or rotary), and there are many kinds of tumbling media out there. But stainless steel shot has become popular, since it's easy to maintain and produces results pretty quickly. Tumbling is probably the best way to polish chains, because there's no danger of getting the chain (or your fingers) caught up in buffing tools. Tumbling is useful for very small items for the same reason. When using stainless steel shot, the process also work-hardens your pieces, which is very nice for chains, ear wires or earring posts, large hoops, etc.

Urban Maille, a wonderful resource for all things chain maille, has a very good tutorial on using stainless steel shot for polishing chains. The article mentions some of the downfalls of using pins in the mix, including the fact that they can get stuck in some of the denser chain maille weaves. Another reason mentioned — the possibility that pins leave ping marks on flat, polished expanses of metal — is the reason I first took them out of my mix. My tests didn't show "ping" marks, but I did notice some etched, wavy lines, so I took them out. If you search the web you'll find strong opinions both for and against using them. I suggest you test pins out on the styles of jewelry you're making, and see how they work for you.

I decided to put the pins back into my mix for some of the pieces I'm working on now, and because lately I haven't been making things that have large expanses of plain metal. Hopefully I won't start seeing etched lines in everything, because I am not detail-oriented enough to take the pins out of my mix more than once. Really. I distinctly remember picking them out a few years ago and thinking "I will NEVER do this again!" Hopefully I won't want to, or if I do I'll be able to find a strainer with just the right sized holes that will let them spill out on their own.

One of the biggest reasons I like tumbling pieces in the shot is because it's so much cleaner than using a buffing wheel. It's true that nothing brings up a high, lustrous shine on metal like buffing, but I decided long ago that I don't like a high luster enough to put up with all the mess. Making jewelry is dirty enough without adding that at the end.

The only thing I don't love about the stainless steel is that the burnishing action of the shot will sometimes raise a fine "lip" of metal along flat edges. I've never discovered anyone else that ran into this problem, so if you have, please let me know. My solution is to limit the time a piece spends in the tumbler (no more than, say, a couple of hours), and/or gently file off any hard edges. Or, you know, that lip, if I've left the piece in too long. I'll post a picture if it happens again.

A cotter pin is a metal fastener with two tines that are bent to hold things. The device is commonly called a split pin in the UK. Wikipedia has a pretty good description of how they're commonly used. They come in all different sizes, and are useful to jewelers for providing tension. This photo (click for a bigger image) shows how I used them to make sure two strips of metal were held tightly in place while I "sweat" soldered them together.

Actually, this was just a photo shoot: the placement of the pins during actual use was probably more uniform. First I melted solder to the top strip with the pierced triangles in it, then I placed it over the plain strip, added the cotter pins, and heated the "sandwich" up again until the solder flowed. The "free" pins at the bottom of the photo show what happens after use: the one on the left is unused, the one on the right has been used a few times, probably at least three.

You can see that heating these things up in a torch makes them lose some of their tension/strength, but depending on how thick your bits of metal are, you can use them a few times. These were the smallest stainless steel pins I could find at the hardware store, and were 11 cents each.

The width of a saw cut is called a kerf. The smaller the blade, the thinner the kerf. You can see the difference in the photo below (click on the photo for a bigger version):

In the top strip, the line between triangles on the left (making "arrows") was made with a size 2/0 saw blade; the line between the triangles on the right was made with a size 5 saw blade. In the bottom strip, both lines have been finished with the size 5 saw blade. You can see how the kerf from the bigger blade becomes a design element — that thicker line is more visually interesting than the thin line. On a practical level, since I was sweat-soldering this strip onto another piece of metal, the thicker line would be much less likely to wick up solder, and get filled in.

It would be possible to make a cut with a thin blade, and then enlarge it with sandpaper carefully fit into the slit — but it would be slow, and the less straight the cut, the more difficult that method would be. However, cutting relatively thin sheet metal with a relatively thick saw blade is also pretty tough. It was a little easier to use an intermediate size blade before jumping to the biggest one (that is, use a 2/0, then a 2, then a size 5). But what made it easier for me was to cut into the bench pin, and cut through the metal as a side-effect. Those big blades are just annoying to use on thin sheet metal!

Or, rather, Trust The Math, Pamela!

After making Julia's first ring too small, I carefully consulted my books, measured the ring I made, measured some other rings I've made, did the math I discussed in this post, checked the books again, measured some rings again, and did the math again — I very carefully made the second ring too big.

I pretty much knew I was going to do it. I think I even warned my sister it might happen. But that first ring was so small, I just couldn't believe that the number I came up with could possibly be right. Turns out, after using that very same number for ring number three, that it was.

Turns out, come to think of it, that I probably didn't do any math — at all — until after that first ring turned out to be too small. Turns out that English Majors aren't always right. Who knew?

On to finishing and polishing. All three. One of them is bound to fit Julia!