20th January 2021 - Customer Locations: Launceston/Townsville/Toowoomba/Runcorn

Launceston - The first job for 2021 was some more pods to add to a chain for a customer in Tasmania. In fact all 4 of these pieces in this post were for customers outside of Cairns.

At the end of 2019 I made 3 pods for the chain but with the addition of one more member to the family two more were required.

Townsville - Next was new pendant to go on a charm bracelet I also made back in 2019. The pendant is made in 9ct yellow and white gold and has a different feature on each side.

Toowoomba - Next was some work I did on a sentimental piece for a longtime customer. The task was to alter or replace this pendant to the right so that it could continue to be worn in the family.

The main issue here was that it is created in a non precious metal (I did not make it). This meant I could not do any hot working to this piece for fear of it melting or of the black surface treatment being damaged.

What I suggested was that we cap the pendant to keep the sentimental original and also to fix another issue with the original design.

The first thing I did was drill the pendant and insert a silver pin. Around that pin I then formed the pendant in wax so that the cap matched the shape of the pendant top perfectly. This would be important to avoid movement and the chance of the cap wearing away at the pendant.

We had options with the bail of the cap and decided to orient it so that the pendant no longer spun to the side at times when worn.

With all that done I was ready to turn that wax into metal. To do this a process called “lost wax casting” was used and you can read more about that here in this article on my website.

Skip down to the section titled “Turning that wax into Gold”.

Article: Mould, mend and make

The finished piece is now ready to send down to Toowoomba along with a pendant that came back to be for multiple repairs after 8 years of continual wear. This article below is not about that pendant but it does discuss what happened …it got loved/worn to failure.

Article: Wearing until failure

Runcorn - The last pendant for today is a 3cm Warup pendant that is going to one of my Zenadth Kes customers down in Runcorn. Like it’s larger 3.5cm sister this pendant can be worn both vertically and horizontally. The main thing to consider with the 3cm Warup is that is requires a finer chain to pass through it.

Have a great week and before I go a beautiful spot from where I live. Last Saturday I was up visiting customers in the Atherton area. Before my wife and I headed home we spent some time at Lake Tinaroo. The lake was very busy that day despite the weather being very overcast. Many appeared to be ready to camp the night there despite the threat of the cyclone.