Dotty about copper

Early on in my first class I fell in love with the idea of mixing different metals, I particularly love the colour of copper but it doesn’t make very practical jewellery for everyone with that whole going green thing. So being generally over ambitious and foolhardy I decided to do a commission… for my mum. Ok not exactly jumping in the deep end but started a theme of me making things that get nabbed by my mum.

I sent her some designs for the copper dot idea I wanted to try and she picked one she preferred. The way I made them was to drill holes where each dot was to be and then threaded copper wire through soldering them while they were still long then cutting and filing away till the pattern was flat on the metal. They came out ok but I wasn’t really happy with the hairline gaps round the wires which were even worse on the scaled up pendant.

The lovely people over at the cookson gold’s forum helped me improve the pendant by flooding in with solder and filing away carefully. They also explained how to do the process properly the next time. To avoid the gaps I needed to get a tighter fit with the wires, this meant drilling holes at a smaller size to the wire then carefully increasing the size till they have a snug fit with the wire.  The last image is my second go at using this technique, a similar type earring but with different size wires.