The Ripple Suite: Complete

Double ripple earrings and bracelet


Ripple band ring with liver of sulphur (sulfur) patina. It is 5 mm wide.


Double ripple earrings (again)

And the inspirational photo.

The work in progress posts: 7, 8, 9, 10, 11,
The design posts: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6

What do *you* see?

There's a little stick figure man in there (his head is where the two small ripples overlap) - see him? There's also a hint of two pregnant ladies, with tiny heads ...

First adventures with liver of sulphur

I am amazed at my success with applying a liver of sulphur/sulfur patina to one of my fold formed earrings. I would have been happy with black, but getting lovely colours was quite a bonus! Whether I shall be able to repeat this is, of course, quite another thing.

I started with the ripple band ring. I scrubbed it with soap and water, then applied pumice powder using a glass brush.

I used liquid liver of sulphur, sold by an art clay supplier who supplied it in the little bottle shown here. I added the liquid to hot tap water in the tub on the right. The red liquid came out of the bottle in a little glug rather than drops, but there were probably 10 drops or so. The ring was suspended from a thread and submerged for about 30 seconds.

This is how the ring looked after rinsing. I sanded the surface of the ripples with 600 grit wet and dry paper, but thought that the oxidation wasn't dark enough, so dipped the ring for a further half minute.

Here's the ring after its second dunk, and after sanding the ripples and the edges to remove the oxidation there. I'm pretty pleased with it.

Then I found my fold-formed earrings. I decided just to try the nicer one, which has more regular surface indentations. This time I didn't use any pumice powder, but just scrubbed the earring with soap and water, then rinsed and dried it. It took much longer for a colour change to take place this time, perhaps because the solution had cooled down, or because there was soap or grease left on the surface. The inside of the shape (which hadn't been scrubbed) turned black first.

When the silver had turned a copper-like colour, I removed it from the liver of sulphur, rinsed it and used wet and dry paper on the surface. Then I returned it to the solution for a couple of minutes, before rinsing and sanding again.

And this was the result.

Progress with Ripple pieces

The bracelet has been tumble polished and is now completed. The main section is 16 cm (6.25") long

The double ripple earrings (in silver, based on this copper test piece) need more tumbling, and perhaps a little shape tweaking. The two shapes are arranged slightly differently from the prototype, as they look better that way in this case!

The band ring is coming along. I have shaped the flat strip (seen in this post) into a ring. I've done some filing and sanding, but it still needs to be tidied up considerably. I think that this ring may become my first experiment with liver of sulphur.

Ripple band ring started

The ripple band ring, which will be part of my Ripple suite (with earrings and bracelet), will be made from 1 mm thick silver sheet, decorated with little ripples made from 0.6 mm wire. I've made a start on this.

Each mini-ripple was made from a 6 mm diameter ring of wire. These differ a little from my other ripples as there is no loop, and I cut off a little bit of wire after shaping each.

I spent a lot of time on fixing the ripples to the silver sheet, because it took a long time to work out how best to do it. I started out trying to solder all six ripples at once. None of them joined to the sheet, and the end of the wire balled on a couple of the ripples.

My next attempt was to fuse the ripples, as they heated up very quickly. I tried just one ripple, and although the wire looked very hot and liquid, it didn't attach. I decided this was not the time to do my first fusing project after all.

The next change was to hammer the ripples flat, and solder just one at a time. I finally had some success here, but success was strongly related to how I was supporting the sheet. I had to give up on a couple of runs as I was heating the sheet, my tweezers and the soldering block, and just couldn't raise the temperature high enough with my little butane torch. Holding the sheet above the block with the tweezers covering just a tiny bit of metal in a distant corner was the best approach. I suspect if I had been at the class with access to a bigger torch, this would have simply changed, rather than solved, my problems. I would have had melting crises instead!

Before taking the piece to the class to finish, I have cut the silver the right width and length. The surface finish is going to need some work.

Steel block

In the course of my non-jewellery making life, I was given this steel block. It was one of several being used in a project, but they had some left over so I asked if I could have one. It measures 5 cm x 5 cm x 1.9 cm (2" x 2" x 0.75"). I think it will be very useful for hammering, but I'll need to polish the surface first.

Pissenlit: a dandelion close-up

Dandelion, Leeds, 29 May 2008


This link will take you to an article that appeared recently (and once before, in 2002) in the Independent newspaper. Enjoy!
Miles Kington Remembered: Consider the lilies ... and the dandelions and nettles

Puffin pendant design

Although I have been concentrating on the suite of items on the Ripple theme, I do still want to try and make one piece based on the shape of the puffin's beak. I have previously shown some preliminary sketches. These sketches are my latest thoughts.

The shape still has a slight feel of the Starship Enterprise, but I think it is also puffin-like. Ideal for the sci-fi birdwatcher!

From ripple necklace to ripple bracelet in one easy step

The next step in assembling my ripple necklace was to solder the loops on the links closed, leaving the main part of the link open so the links could be joined together.

The soldering went well. After pickling, I was able to lay out the links to check the length of the finished piece.

Making the second set of solder joins (to close the links) turned out to be harder than I'd expected, and this was one part of the construction that I hadn't practised in advance using copper. In several cases, I managed to re-melt the hard solder in the loop, and the loop then got fixed to the next link. In fact, by the time I'd finished I had just enough undamaged links left to construct a bracelet instead of a necklace.

This is the bracelet shown before the ripple links have been forged.

And this is the bracelet after the ripple links have been forged. The ripples have also been slightly bent to suit the curve of the wrist. The bracelet is still to be tumbled polished.

I hope to be able to salvage some of the wire from the wrongly joined links to make other items. But I need to re-think the whole design of the links before attempting another necklace.

Coast ring from Hannah Louise Lamb

I came across a wonderful piece of jewellery featured in Coast magazine. The Coast ring by Hannah Louise Lamb has two interlocking parts, one part is polished and the other textured. The two parts represents the land and the sea, and the join is a wiggly line that represents a stretch of coastline. Purchasers can even specify which bit of coastline should be used.