Recycled Sprite soda can buckel

I had a lot of fun today playing with some old soda cans. Instead of the usual leather I add to my buckles for colour, I thought it would be fun to recycle some cans and see what I could come up with. I found I still needed to use the nickel for strength, but that the tin has a lovely vibrancy and rich color.

I rather like this oak tree which has a portion of a Sprite can behind the nickel. I love how it blends from blue to green, and the bubbles on the can look like light passing through the leaves.

Can't wait to try some more, and think I will try using cork next.

Making the Madrone Tree Pendant

This pendant is inspired by the native madrone trees which grow here in the Santa Cruz Mountains. A popular pendant, I am frequenly asked how it is created, so I thought it would be fun to explain a little about the process.

I begin with a flat sheet of 24ga sterling silver. If I am planing to put some gold accents on the pendant later, I would use fine silver here. With the aid of a rolling mill, a stencil is used to imboss an impression on what will be the interior of the pendant. I cut a new stencil of the background trees for each pendant, as it will be torn by the great pressure exerted by mill. Also, it is nice to have each a little different.

With a disc cutter, one inch circles are cut from the sterling silver sheet. The silver is sandwiched between the steel, and the disc punched out when whacked with the hammer. This it a great tool, fun to use and perfect circles every time.

A drawing of my design is glued to the silver, and small holes are pierced so I can use the saw blade to remove the silver between the branches.

The blade used to saw the silver is quite tiny, only .008" thick. This part of the process requires my greatest concentration. It's so easy to stray off line, but worst of all, these delicate blades break very easily.

I have learned that I must relax and let the saw move through the metal smoothly. Any tension or abrupt turns will cause the blade to snap, and it is very frustrating to replace the blade and set up the work again frequently. I've also discovered too much coffee in the morning does not help at this point of the day!

I carefully file the silver to clean any rough edges and form the metal. This is where I can have fun giving each tree it's unique character.  No matter how often I make this pendant, no two trees ever turn out identical.

I sand and burnish the branches to smooth out the  surface, and enhance the contrast between the leaves and the trunks of the trees.

A block of wood which has perfect hemispherical indentations of various sizes, called a dapping block, is used to curve the discs into concave domes. 

The metal is supported in the wood, and hit repeatedly while rotated in the block.

The interior edges of the front and back are sanded to ensure a close fit. Solder will not fill in any gaps or spaces, so the fit has to be perfect. A flux is painted on and allow to dry and tiny pieces of hard solder are placed where needed. These will be heated and melted in place. Then the silver is placed in a pickle bath (mild acid) to clean, before the two parts are soldered together. This is known as sweat soldering.

 

Unlike welding, the silver piece has to reach a uniform temperature  before the solder will melt and flow. I use the highest temperature, "hard" solder,  for the first join, 1475 F, then reduce the temperature on each successive solder, so that the previous solder does not turn fluid again.  

The resulting pendant.