Category Archives: Hobbies Gone Wild

I’m a beekeeper, I make wire-wrapped jewelry, and I work with warm glass — among other things. When I pick up a hobby, I dive in headfirst.

Please Don’t Expect Me to Teach You for Free

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Why do strangers expect me to share my time and knowledge with them for free?

I’ve been making jewelry for a bunch of years now and have expanded my skillset from the wire-framed cabochon pendants I began with to all kinds of silversmithing work. Along the way, I developed my skills by watching videos, attending hands-on classes, and practicing what I’ve learned. I’ve also invested literally thousands of dollars in equipment and materials.

This is not a “side gig,” as someone once suggested. It’s a real business with income and expenses. I was on track to be profitable (after all that training and equipment) in 2020 — until COVID hit. I’ll likely turn a profit this year.

Understand that I am self employed with several sources of income. Jewelry making is one of them. Making YouTube videos is another. Flying helicopters during the summer months is yet another. So when someone expects me to share my hard-earned skills with them without compensation, I bristle.

Getting My Skills

My jewelry making skillset began through watching a few videos about wire-wrapping stones. In hindsight, I realize that those videos did more harm than good. One of them actually recommended using hardware store pliers, which have ridges for gripping that seriously scratch metal. The finished pieces I created looked just as amateurish as the pieces in the videos. I fooled myself into being satisfied with them.

Montana Agate first Piece
The first true wire-framed pendant I made in sterling silver. Many thanks to Dorothy for sharing her knowledge with me.

But I was lucky in that I had a friend who did much nicer work and volunteered to teach me. We sat down together and I made my first piece in real silver using her technique. I remember that day as if it were yesterday. We were in Quartzsite and she was renting a far-less-than-perfect single-wide mobile home in a trailer park while working for a lapidary who was set up at Desert Gardens. We did it at the kitchen table one evening with a lamp brought over to provide the light we needed. She was very patient. That first pendant took two hours to make.

Bumble Bee Jasper
I made this Bumble Bee Jasper pendant this past weekend while sitting in my booth at the art show; it sold the same day. I can now make a pendant like this in about 30 minutes if I’m not interrupted.

I was happy with my first effort, but looking at it now reminds me of how far I’ve come. My style has changed significantly over the years. I now wrap all of my bails for a cleaner (in my opinion) look and work hard to cover the stone as little as possible. I’ve made (and sold) hundreds of these pendants over the past three and a half years and I’ve since moved on to other things.

I should make something very clear here. I never asked Dorothy to teach me how to make pendants. She offered to do it. She wouldn’t take my money, either — even though she’d provided the sterling silver for that first pendant. But I wasn’t satisfied to let it rest. I called up Rio Grande, the jewelry supply company she introduced me to, and asked them to put $50 on her account for her to use the next time she bought something. A sort of gift certificate. Months later, she found that credit and thanked me for it. But the way I see it, I still owe her.

The trouble with wire work is that it’s seen as an inferior form of jewelry making. I’m not sure why. While some wire work — like what I’d started doing on my own — can be pretty crappy, there’s other work that is far more polished and professional. Still, when you apply for a juried art show and the only thing you’ve got to show is wire work, prejudices keep you out, no matter how polished it looks. I needed to take my jewelry making to the next step.

That said, I signed up for a 3-day intensive metalworking class at the Tacoma Metal Arts Center. This was not a cheap undertaking. The class itself cost $375 and I had to get myself over to Tacoma, which is about a 4-hour drive. I also had to get lodging for myself; I lucked out there because they let me park my truck camper in their back parking area every night. I’ve since taken two other classes through TMAC, including a blacksmithing class in Eatonville.

Hammered Earrings
These silver earrings are entirely handmade, right up to the ear wire. (Only the beads are purchased.) I started with silver sheet metal and cut the earring and “washer” shapes. Next came hammering and stamping the texture. Then I applied a patina and used various tools to rub it off the high points. Finally, I created the ear wire with the quartz and silver beads.

I learned a ton there although few of the skills were polished enough to use right afterwards. I had to practice. I started producing different styles of earrings, using the metal forming skills I learned. Soldering, at first, was a stumbling block, but I (mostly) got past it. I began making tab-mounted, then prong mounted, and finally bezel set cabochon pendants.

I also decided to take the deep dive into jewelry making by investing in equipment. A flex shaft. A rolling mill. A table-top metal shear. Hammers and dapping sets. Mandrels. A vice. A grinder. Bench blocks. Finishing tools. Soldering station equipment. The list — and the related costs — go on and on. But if there’s one smart thing my wasband ever said (again and again), it’s “Every job is easy when you have the right tools.” I invested in the tools I needed to explore my design ideas and get the job done.

And I took more classes. In January/February 2020, before COVID hit hard, I signed up for 5 Vivi Magoo classes at the Tucson Gem and Mineral Show. That meant an investment in close to $2,000 on just skills. And $250 for a site in a campground nearby — rather than the $250/night cost of a room at the hotel where the classes were being held. I learned more advanced techniques by actually doing them. The skills I brought home enabled me to come up with new designs and take my work to the next level. I was able to get into most of the juried art shows I applied to — the ones in Palm Springs remain elusive — and to sell my work at shows and in galleries.

Still, I continue to this day to take classes — I just signed up for one in Tucson this coming February — and to hone my skills with new designs.

Sharing My Knowledge

About two years ago, before COVID hit, I did some one-on-one and classroom training. In most cases, it was project based: I’d teach people how to make something I made, including wire-framed pendants, chain bracelets and necklaces, and a variety of metal formed earrings.

Understand that I’ve always been paid to share my knowledge with others. Whether I did one-on-one training at Pybus Market when I sold pendants there or taught small groups at a booth in Quartzsite, AZ in the winter or did classroom training at Gallery One in Ellensburg, I was compensated for my time and the materials I provided to class attendees.

The only exception is when one of my neighbors wanted a copper cuff bracelet like the ones I make out of copper pipe. I invited her over to my shop and the two of us hammered out a pair of bracelets. She is my friend and she takes care of my cats and chickens when I travel. It was a pleasure to be able to teach her how to make her own bracelet and I think she values it more than if I just gave her one. There’s something special about having a hand in making something you wear.

A Stranger Emails

In an effort to generate some off-season revenue before I head south for the winter — as I normally do — I placed a few Craig’s List ads offering my services as a jewelry maker to teach people how to make some of the things I make and sell. The ads go under the heading of “Learn to Make these Earrings!” etc. They basically show a photo or two of the project item and skills they’ll learn while making it. There’s a cost with a discount if more than one person attends. I’d link to them, but chances are they will have expired by the time most people read this. Here’s a screen shot of the start of one:

Learn to Make Earrings
This is the first pair of earrings I designed and made; ironically, they remain one of my most popular styles.

I also have an ad for general jewelry making where I offer to teach anything I know using any of my equipment for $50/hour/person with a 2-hour minimum. This is for someone who has an idea of what they want to learn but doesn’t necessarily want to do one of my projects.

On Thursday, I got an email forwarded by Craigs List, referring to one of my project-based ads:

Hi:

Saw your post on CL, and I watched your YT video, nice shop.

I am semi-retired and live in [redacted] and process roughs from a local source. I would like to learn how to make jewelry, and I also interested in perhaps contracting with you for some consulting.

In my garage/shop, I have a commercial grade vibratory tumbler, and 3 large rotary tumblers, a 6-inch Hi-Tech saw, and flat lap, a Gryphon router, and the necessary tools, and most of the supplies for making jewelry. Oh yeah, and about 400 lbs of roughs, and about 200 lbs of finished stones (I’ve been tumbling since 2016).

I also had a professional website built in January of 2021 but I have not really given it the focus it needs, in part because I want to add jewelry to the product line.
[redacted]

While I am a life-long (closet) artist, my devotion has been to pencil & paper, otherwise I was a [redacted] in [redacted] for [redacted].

I want help organizing my shop, so that I can make jewelry here in [redacted]. I have also been toying with the idea of hiring a part-time employee to make jewelry from my processed stones, and would enjoy a second opinion.

Best regards,

[redacted name and phone number]

(By the way, here’s the shop video he’s referring to. It gives you some idea of my investment in equipment.)

I have redacted some identifying information because it’s not my purpose to identify and/or shame this person. It doesn’t really matter who it is, does it? I’ll just point out here that, like me, his primary career was not in any way related to art or jewelry making. This is something pretty new for him.

I looked at his website. It was very pretty. It had a lot of pictures of tumbled stones and a lot of the usual nonsense about spirituality and vibrations and the meanings of rocks. It did not seem to actually sell anything.

I re-read his message. He is basically a rock tumbler — he polishes rough stones by putting them in a barrel with different grits and letting the barrel run for weeks on end. Anyone can tumble rocks — hell, Amazon sells a kit that’ll get a 10-year-old kid started in no time for just $59. The only thing that impressed me about his equipment was that he was set up to tumble a lot of rocks.

(Maybe I should mention here that you can buy tumbled rocks by the handful or little bagful from a lot of gift shops out west for $5. Here’s 2 pounds of the stuff with a book about rocks for $20.)

I don’t use tumbled rocks in my work. The only stones I use are cabochons, which require different equipment and a lot more time and effort to make. Cabochons have flat backs and domed fronts. They’re often in regular shapes, like ovals and teardrops, but can be more randomly shaped, depending on the skills and artistic ideas of the lapidary who makes them.

I thought for a while about how I would answer this guy’s message. I even toyed with the idea of hooking him up with someone who did the kind of wire wrap work I started with. But in the end I decided to give him what he seemed to be asking for: advice.

I’m sorry it took me so long to respond. I was busy this weekend selling my work at Art in the Park in Leavenworth.

I don’t think I can help you. I don’t use tumbled stones in my work at all. I use cabochons, which are best for the kind of stone setting I do.

As for an opinion: if you hired someone to make jewelry for you, the money you pay that person would have to be added to the cost of the jewelry, along with the materials used to make the jewelry.

You have to consider how much you could sell the jewelry for. Have you visited shops selling the kind of jewelry you want to make? Have you seen the prices on that jewelry? Can you discern whether it’s actually selling at those prices?

As you may have already surmised, having a “professional website” does not mean you’ll be able to sell a lot of product. Everyone has a website these days. You’d do better attending art or craft shows or setting up wholesale or consignment accounts. All that costs money, too. And, after spending a total of 30 hours in Leavenworth this weekend, with six hours of commuting and the cost of the booth fee, my tent, and display equipment to factor in, I can assure you that shows take a lot of time, energy, and money to sell at. Wholesale accounts expect to pay 50% of retail; consignment these days wants 35% to 40% of the selling price. Selling costs are real and need to be figured into any calculation.

Is the selling price minus cost of sales and cost of creation worthwhile for you?

These are the things you need to think objectively about. I hope this has been helpful to you.

Apparently, I misunderstood what he wanted. He didn’t want “a second opinion,” which I read as advice. He replied within 24 hours:

Thank you for your response. The business part I understand, the mechanics of jewelry making is my present interest.

Like yourself, I also do shows. I’ll be at the [redacted] Farmers Market this [redacted]. I do it because it’s a great chance to interact with the community, and I am test-marketing new products, some of which I purchase from Amazon, and resell.

I do have a rock saw, a sander and dop station, and can make cabochons myself.

However to speed things up, I’m in the process of determining whether I want a Cab King or a 6-inch Covington combo unit. I realize the lead times on these are significant but I am not deterred.

So, with that said, would consider teaching me how to make jewelry?

Regards,

[redacted]

Whoa. There was a lot to unpack there.

I bristled big time when I read, “like yourself, I do shows.” (And it wasn’t the grammar that got me.) He has no fucking idea what “doing shows” is all about if he’s limited to a 4-hour local farmer’s market. Has he carted a tent, leg weights, tables, table coverings, displays, etc. all over the southwest, spending hours to set up and tear down booths at venues in three (so far) different states? Has he dealt with trying to sell inside a tent in the cold or heat or rain? Having to go to the bathroom when there’s no one around to watch your merchandise while you wait in line at a port-a-potty? Has he even dealt with the jurying process, paying a fee just to see if his work is good enough to get into a show?

Okay, fine. But then there’s the farmers’ market itself. I’d been talking to a customer about that particular farmers’ market over the weekend. The customer suggested it to me. I tried to kindly explain why I wasn’t interested, focusing on the fact that setting up my booth for a 4-hour event was just not practical. The real reason was the fact that most farmers’ markets are not juried — that means there’s no assurance that I’d be showing my work with other people selling real art. You might think that’s a good thing, but when you’re trying to sell silver and gemstone pendants for $59 each and sterling silver earrings for $39 a pair, it really isn’t good to be among people selling junk jewelry for a lot less money.

And then there was his admission that he buys stuff on Amazon and sells it at the farmers’ market. Holy shit. That is a mortal sin in the world of art shows. I guess it’s okay if you just want to turn a few bucks, but if you want to be and represent yourself as an artist? My opinion of him dropped a few levels when I read that.

And I became very glad I didn’t waste my time at that farmers’ market.

As for buying a Cab King (which I own) or Covington Combo Unit and thinking you can make great cabochons cost effectively right out of the gate, I can tell you from experience that it just isn’t going to happen. When I make my own cabochons — which I occasionally do — I spend roughly an hour or more of time on every single one of them. I have come to realize that my time is worth a lot more than I could get for it by making cabochons, so I’ve decided to simply buy most of the cabochons I use. My collection is quite extensive at this point, with over 800 stones from all over the world, and I have no trouble selling them for considerably more than their cost on the rare instances when someone wants to buy one. My art is in the jewelry I make — not the raw materials I make it with.

Anyway, I was able to answer his request with a much shorter email. After all, it seemed that he wanted me to teach him how to make jewelry. Sure, I could do that:

Yes, I have a Craig’s List ad that offers that service.
https://wenatchee.craigslist.org/art/d/malaga-learn-to-make-fine-jewelry/7383971485.html

I can basically teach how to make almost anything that I make.

Maria

The link would take him to my ad about teaching jewelry making for $50/hour with a 2-hour minimum. If he wanted me to teach him how to make jewelry, he, like almost everyone else I’d taught over the past few years, would have to open his wallet and pay me for my time, knowledge, and equipment.

That was three days ago. I’m still waiting for his response.

Isn’t It Worth Something?

This is the same crap I’ve been dealing with for years in all of my freelance work: writing books and articles, flying helicopters, editing video, making jewelry. I have skills and equipment — sometimes very costly equipment — do you know what costs to buy and maintain a helicopter? — and someone expects me to share these things for free.

These are the tools I use to make a living. Any job I do requires my skills and equipment and the most valuable thing I have to offer: my time. Why the hell should I be expected to give this stuff away? To a stranger, no less?

In hindsight, I’m sorry I spent so much time answering his original email message. I gave him information based on my experience and I used my time to share it with him. What the hell is wrong with me? Why didn’t I realize from the get-go that he was just another person trying to squeeze something of value out of me, likely for free?

Anyway, I don’t expect to hear from him again, unless he’s going to try to trade me training time for some of his rocks.

I bet you can guess how that suggestion would go with me.

First Tries at Bottle Slumping

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Yes, I’m firing up the kiln again.

Years ago, in the autumn of 2014, when my building was first built but my home inside it was barely started, I took up yet another hobby to keep me busy while I waited for my wasband to get his head out of his ass and pay me what he owed me from our divorce settlement. That’s when I started doing “warm glass” work — specifically, making things like Christmas tree ornaments and jewelry with melted down, repurposed wine bottle glass.

Some Backstory

Star Ornament
Here is one of the Christmas tree ornaments I created from broken bottle glass in my tabletop kiln back in December 2014. The blue glass is from a sake bottle.

I bought a tiny desktop kiln and tinier molds to fit inside it. I then acquired countless used wine bottles from the wineries in the area, broke them into tiny pieces, and melted down the pieces in the molds. Some of the resulting items — especially the Christmas tree ornaments — came out rather nice. But beyond that, I was disappointed, mostly because of problems with devitrification. Simply described, the rough edges of the broken glass, when melted down, prevented the final product from having a smooth, shiny surface.

I did all kinds of experiments to get rid of the unsightly marks and finally concluded that they’d have to be polished out. I bought a lap grinder as a sort of universal polishing tool — I was also trying to turn wine bottles into drinking glasses and needed to polish the rims — but it never worked the way I needed it to. I got discouraged and, as I usually do, set it aside and picked up another project to keep me busy. In this case, it was wiring my entire home prior to professional installation of plumbing, insulation, and drywall.

That took me through the winter and into the spring of 2015. I moved into my home and continued working on projects there: finishing my deck, trimming out the doors and windows, finishing up the loft. With flying work and an active social life, I didn’t have much time for playing with broken bottles and a kiln, especially since the results were so frustrating. Yet sometime around then, I bought a bigger kiln. I think I was considering larger glass projects, but don’t remember. The kiln arrived, I assembled it on a wheeled platform I built for it so it would be easy to move around my shop, and I promptly forgot about it.

Last autumn, before departing for my winter trip south, I finally got around to trying out the “new” kiln. I was able to set up several molds inside it. It took a few tries to get the firing schedule right and when I did, I was satisfied with the glass fusing of the items I put into the molds. But I hadn’t licked the devitrification problem, so I wondered why I was even bothering.

Of course, devitrification would not be an issue if I purchased glass specifically made for fusing in a kiln. It was available online from a variety of sellers and would make beautiful pieces. But that wasn’t my goal. My goal was to take garbage — wine bottles — and turn it into something desirable. And I was failing — at least to make pieces up to my own standards which, admittedly, are sometimes a bit too high to achieve.

The Jewelry Connection

Turquoise Pendant
Kingman turquoise with bronze wrapped in sterling silver and copper. I made and sold this pendant last Friday.

In January, I took up wire-wrapping gemstones to make pendants and earrings (so far). I developed a real knack for this and quickly developed my own style. I’ve sold a few dozen pieces so far and haven’t gotten bored with it yet. I think it’s because of the variety of stones and the new techniques I can experiment with. And having people praise me for my work — and actually pay me to own a piece — is a real motivator.

I occasionally set up a vendor table at Pybus Public Market on Fridays or Saturdays. (Last Friday I sold five pieces, including one that I’d just made less than an hour before.) One of the other vendors does art glass work. She uses the kind of glass she buys specifically for fusing and turns out some wonderful bowls and plates and other items. I asked her if she ever makes cabochons — after all, why not wrap a “stone” made of glass? She said she could but even after prodding her a few times, she hasn’t delivered any. I told her about my kiln and how it was nearly brand new and hardly used. She said she might have a friend interested in buying it.

I’ve been shedding a lot of the things I’ve owned for years that I lugged to Washington when I moved. I had too many things taking up space in my garage that I knew, deep down inside, I’d never use. The microwave from my old house was the first to go. An old Sony television, still in its box, went next. Both of those went for free. But I also sold my old desk, curtain rods, luggage, and all kinds of household items I packed from September 2012 to May 2013 while I was waiting for the court date for my divorce. (Honestly, if my wasband hadn’t delayed the court date, I would have had less time to pack and would have left a ton of stuff behind.) My telescope and a set of cast iron cookware were the most recent things to go and they each brought in a surprising amount of money. Maybe it was time to sell the “new” kiln.

Or maybe not. There was still one other thing I wanted to try: bottle slumping.

Bottle Slumping 101

I’ve been to a lot of arts and crafts shows. My good friend Janet is an artist and I’ve visited her at many of the shows where she sells her work. One of the craft items that occasionally appears at these shows is wine bottles that have been flattened in a kiln to make a plate. The technique is referred to as bottle slumping.

While my original kiln is too tiny to slump anything bigger than a shot glass, my new kiln can handle a standard sized wine bottle if I place it diagonally across the floor of the kiln. Yes, that means I can only do one at a time, but it was still worth a try. The way I saw it, if I didn’t use the damn kiln, I should sell it. I needed a reason to keep it. Making something desirable out of garbage was my goal. I still had literally hundreds of wine bottles to work with. (I had actually started disposing them in my recycle bin at the rate of 3 cases every two weeks but with 12 cases gone, I’d barely made a dent in what I had accumulated. When you have a lot of storage space, you find a way to fill it.)

I did research online. Using a kiln isn’t as easy as just turning it on and waiting for it to finish. You have to find and program in an appropriate firing schedule. Schedules vary based on what you’re trying to achieve, what kiln you’re using, and what kind of glass you put in it. So right from the get-go, I knew I’d be doing a lot of experiments.

I should also mention here that there are two ways to slump bottles: with and without a mold. I didn’t have a bottle slumping mold so, by necessity, I’d have to slump without one. That got me worried about glass sticking to the bottom of my kiln. I had Thin Fire paper — it’s a thin sheet of paper that turns to a white powder in the firing process and prevents melted glass from sticking to whatever is under it — but I didn’t know how much the glass would melt and whether it would get into the corners of my kiln. Still, I was ready to give it a go.

First Try

In case you’re wondering, here’s the first schedule I tried:

SegRampTempHold
1500°1100°10 min
2250°1300°0 min
3300°1425°10 min

Let cool naturally.

So the other day, I programmed in a simple three-segment schedule, leveled the kiln — I use it in my car garage, which is gently sloped toward the door — put a bottle in there, closed the lid, and started it up.

The other thing many folks don’t realize about using a kiln is that it isn’t fast. The schedule I used would ramp up the temperature from my garage temperature to 1420°F over a matter of hours. Cooling would take even longer. I had dinner guests that night and the kiln was still too hot to open before they arrived at 5 PM. Although it might have been ready before I went to bed at 10 PM, I’d forgotten about it. But I remembered in the morning and went down to check it.

And I was pleasantly surprised with the results.

The bottle had melted nearly flat right in place, without seeping into the corners of the kiln. I say “nearly” flat because the bottle’s bottom, which is thicker than the rest of the bottle, had sort of collapsed and folded to make a lump. Although the neck of the bottle had collapsed, there were two air pockets inside. And when I washed the kiln paper power off the bottle, some water got inside along the neck.

The side that had rested on the floor of the kiln would be the top of the plate. It was flat with the texture of the bottom of the kiln, which I rather liked. When I set it on the countertop that way, however, the bulge at the bottom of the bottle lifted that end up, resulting in a plate that wasn’t level.

First Try Bottle Slumping
Here’s my first try. You can clearly see the big air pockets inside the bottle.

So I had three problems to resolve in my next test: get the air pockets out, close up the neck better, and come up with a way to level the resulting plate.

Second Try

I tackled the first two problems first and managed to resolve one of them. I decided that the reason there were air pockets and that the neck allowed water to get in was that I hadn’t melted the glass enough. I’d try again, but this time raise the highest temperature to 1450.

I reprogrammed the kiln, set another clean bottle in there, and got it started.

I do need to mention here that when I say “clean bottle” I mean completely clean and dry glass bottle, inside and out. I had to remove the labels by soaking in hot water for more than an hour, scrape away adhesive residue, and then use 90% rubbing alcohol to get the last little bits of glue off. Then I used hot water and a lot of agitation to rinse the inside of the bottle at least four times. Then I had to stand the bottle up on its neck in a place where the water would drain out and the bottle would eventually dry. This prep work is, quite frankly, a pain in the ass. But I do them two or three at a time so there’s always another bottle ready to slump.

I went about my day, running errands and doing chores around the house.

The schedule took another few hours to run and hours to cool. Finally, by mid afternoon the kiln was down to 200°. I opened it up but wasn’t foolish enough to touch the bottle, which would also be 200°. I did get a good look at it, though and it looked better. One of the air pockets was gone and the neck was nicely closed up, but there was still an air pocket right below the neck.

Second Try Slump
This is my second try. The neck had closed up nicely, but there’s still a good sized air bubble right below the neck. You’re looking at the flat side of the bottle.

When the kiln temperature got down to 90°F, I touched the bottle and found it cool enough to remove. It was better than the first one, but not quite “perfect” yet.

Third Try

Bottle in Kiln
Here’s the third try bottle inside the kiln. Note the tiny piece of shelf leg positioned under the neck. It’s unfortunate that I can only do one bottle at a time; once I get the schedule perfected, it would be nice to do two at a time.

In the meantime, I’d called the art glass lady from Pybus to get some advice. What I really wanted to know is whether I had to keep using the kiln paper or whether I could just use kiln wash at the bottom of my kiln. I would quickly run out of kiln paper if I used a fresh sheet for each firing and it isn’t something I can buy locally. She told me she uses the same stuff I was using and recommended it. She offered to sell me some, but I didn’t want to bother her with that. I also told her what I was doing and mentioned the air bubbles. She suggested ramping up at a slower rate and holding it longer at the 1300° temperature.

So I grabbed another bottle — which happened to be a slightly different style — and stuck it in the kiln. At this point, I’d also decided to try propping up the neck of the bottle so that when it slumped, it would make a raised edge that would (hopefully) balance out the folded ridge of the bottle bottom. The trick was finding something to prop it up on. You can’t use just anything when you’re heating it to 1450°F. I poked around my broken glass fusing supplies, which were all neatly organized in a rolling cart in my shop, and stumbled upon the shelf legs for my tiny desktop kiln. I wrapped one of them in kiln paper, laid it on its side, and stuck it under the bottle’s neck, about 3 inches from the top. Then I reprogrammed the kiln controller again following the glass lady’s advice, closed it up, and got it started.

Finishing a Product

While the kiln did its thing, I played around with my first experiment. I wanted to make a branded cheese plate that local wineries might use or sell. I had some old wine labels from a friend’s winery and stuck it on the bottle. I then mixed up a batch of food-safe clear coat that I’d purchased earlier in the day, leveled the bottle-plate on a work surface, and poured the mixture over the label and flat side of the bottle. I soon realized that I’d mixed up too much and spent some time dealing with drips as the mixture self-leveled, resulting in a thin coat over the top of the plate.

It was tough to resist the urge to touch it, but I managed. According to the package instructions, I’ll need to wait at least 48 hours before I attempt to test the surface for durability. Remember, if this is a cheese plate, it should be able to stand up to the work of a cheese knife on it.

First Try with Label and Coating
This is my first try bottle with my first try label and coating. This is good enough for me to use, but not good enough for sale. Still, I’m on the right track.

Third Try Results

This morning, after making my coffee — I have my priorities straight — I went down to fetch the third try. I felt a moment of panic when I thought that little piece of kiln shelf leg was stuck but it came loose without much effort. The result was a squared out bump in the neck of the bottle which forms a sort of leg when the bottle is set with the flat side up.

Trouble is, it’s too high. Now the plate tilts down the other way. That’s easy enough to fix; all I need to do is trim the shelf leg — which I think I can do — to make it flatter for the next try.

Third Try Bottle Slumping
Here’s my third try. There are fewer air bubbles inside the bottle and there’s now a leg to hold up the neck end. Trouble is, the leg is too tall and I really want a bottle with no bubbles.

As for the air pockets in the bottle, they are greatly reduced. But I’m not convinced the firing schedule fixed that. This bottle had a different shape with a more gently angled transition from bottle body to neck. Perhaps that’s why air wasn’t trapped inside the bottle when it melted? The only way to know for sure is to use the same schedule with a bottle shaped like one of the ones I originally used.

Fourth Try

In case you’re wondering, here’s the schedule I’m trying now:

SegRampTempHold
1500°500°12 min
2500°750°12 min
3600°1100°10 min
4200°1300°20 min
5250°1475°10 min
69999°1100°60 min
7500°970°30 min
8120°750°20 min

Let cool naturally.

My fourth try is in the kiln right now. I took the same shape bottle (since that’s what was prepped), cut the shelf leg so it would be shorter, and positioned everything in the kiln. And then, rather than modifying the simple schedule I’d been using, I reprogrammed it entirely using the longer, more detailed schedule for bottle slumping that I’d found. My theory is that the slower ramp up and longer hold times will give the air in the bottles a better chance to escape, thus eliminating the pockets of air.

Kiln Controller
My kiln has a programmable controller which can store up to 6 user schedules.

Timing and Power Use

Keep in mind that each of these trials takes about 10 hours to complete. With only enough space for one bottle, I can only do two bottles a day — and that would require me to put the next one in each time I remove one. That’s not a huge deal for me; I’m here and once the schedule is set up just right, it is as easy as positioning a bottle and pushing a button on the kiln.

As for power usage, my kiln’s controller has the ability to calculate costs for me once I program in my kilowatt hour rate — which I just did. But I already know that the cost will be lower than what most people might think. Chelan County, where I live, supposedly has the second lowest electric rates in the country thanks to hydro and wind power: currently 2.7¢/kilowatt hour. (Compare that to 13.27¢/kilowatt hour where I lived in Arizona and 15.39¢/kilowatt hour where I lived in New Jersey.) The electric bill for my all electric house was only $25 last month. I’m thinking each firing might cost 25¢ to 50¢.

Goals

My final goal is to get a relatively level plate that can be used to serve cheese either as is directly from the kiln or with the application of a local winery label with a food safe clear coat to make it washable. I’d then sell those to local wineries for their use or make a product that they can sell to visitors. I can think of a few wineries that would be all over it once I got the kinks worked out.

Next time I’m at Pybus, I’ll bring a sample with me to see what kind of interest I get. Wish me luck.

Jewelry Making: A Hobby Gone Wild

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An update on my wire-wrapped jewelry endeavors.

By now, the folks who know me well know that my jewelry making hobby has blown up into something resembling an addiction. Indeed, it’s difficult for me to pass up a shop or website that offers gemstone cabochons (cabs, to those of us who work with these things) for sale without taking a look — and likely buying ones within my budget. I’ve now got a collection of about 4 dozen cabs in various shapes and sizes made of a stunning selection of stones. They’re almost all polished to a reflective shine. Just gorgeous.

The weird thing about this is that I’ve been going to Quartzsite, AZ where I bought about half the cabs I have now, for more than 20 years and saw cabs for sale every single year. It wasn’t until I realized what I could do with them that I began buying them. And when I started getting kind of good at turning them into jewelry, the draw became irresistible. I’ve since found a good supplier on Easy who sells decent quality stones at a reasonable price. I’ve bought two dozen from them in the past two weeks.

More about Cabochons

A cabochon, in case you’re wondering, is:

a gemstone which has been shaped and polished as opposed to faceted. The resulting form is usually a convex (rounded) obverse with a flat reverse.

Nevada Dendritic Sage Agate Wrapped in Silver
Nevada Dendritic Sage Agate wrapped in sterling silver. I don’t think you can make a bad piece of jewelry out of such a nice stone — if you let the stone show.

Lapidaries create cabs by cutting stones into slabs, then cutting those slabs into shapes and polishing them with wheels of varying grits. I’ve seen guys do this and it looks like a ton of work. A good lapidary can produce beautiful cabs by finding the best features in a slab and featuring them in a finished cab. Those are the cabs I look for when I’m shopping.

Cabs range in size from very small — maybe 10 mm long — to quite large — over 50 mm on a side. I prefer them 30 to 45 mm long and 15 to 30 mm wide. Smaller than that and they’re tough to work with; larger and they make heavier pieces than I like.

Although I do like working with odd-shaped pieces, it’s a bit more challenging to get them properly wrapped. My skills aren’t quite reliable enough yet to tackle them successfully. So I stick with ovals, teardrops, and elongated pieces. I’m just starting to get the hang of dealing with square corners.

Turning Cabochons into Jewelry

There are basically three ways to turn a cab into a piece of jewelry:

  • Drill a hole in it and use that to secure a finding or beading string. Drilling a hole in a stone basically turns it into a bead. I don’t do this. I don’t like the idea of drilling into a beautiful stone or using a hole to secure it in jewelry. That’s my opinion. I’m sure a lot of beaders would disagree. Sorry. (I should add here that when working with very small stones, I think beading is the way to go. I may use gemstone beads as accents in future pieces; I’m still thinking about it.)
  • Use wire wrapping to secure the stone into the jewelry piece. This is what I do. There are several styles of wire-wrapping; the style I use is rather intricate, although I have experimented with simpler styles. I usually use 20 to 22 gauge square or round wire wrapped with 22 gauge half-round wire to create a custom frame for a stone, build a bail, and secure the stone into the frame. Then I use the excess frame wire to create accents with loops and swirls.
  • Cut and solder metal to create jewelry mounts for stones. This is another nice way to turn a cab into jewelry — especially if the cab’s reverse side is marred or unfinished. This is both harder and easier than wire-wrapping. It’s harder because you need good metal cutting and soldering skills. But, in a way, it’s also easier because you can work with virtually any size or shape cabochon and get good results.

I’ve begun work on a blog post providing more detail on how I make my pieces. The only thing I need to finish it are step-by-step photos. It won’t be enough to teach you how to do it, but at least you’ll see what I do. There are some good videos on YouTube to get you started if you want to try and I’ll link to the ones I think are best in that blog post.

The Metals

K2 Granite wrapped with Silver
This is K2 Granite — yes, from the mountain K2 — wrapped in sterling silver. The colored specs are natural. I’d score this a 5 out of 5; it’s currently my favorite piece.

Lately, I’ve been working almost exclusively with sterling silver, although I have worked with copper and silver plate in the past. (When getting started, it’s a good idea to work with cheaper metals.) My friend Dorothy sat down with me when we were both in Quartzsite in January and showed me how she makes her jewelry. That was the first time I worked with sterling silver. She stressed the importance of tight, even wraps and put me on the right track in a search for perfection. Every time I finish a piece, I give it an objective score of 1 to 5, with 5 being the best. I’m always shooting for 5s but am happy with 4s. I learn a lot from 3s and usually disassemble anything that scores lower than that.

Dorothy also taught me to save every single bit of silver that gets cut away from the piece. When my little plastic container is full, I can send it back to the silver supplier for credit on the purchase of more silver. At $16.60 per ounce (today’s price), those trimmings can really add up.

My Progress

I’ve come a long way since I started creating wire-wrapped gemstone cabochon pendants back in January. In fact, I look at some of the pieces I created back then, remembering how proud I was of them, and cringe.

My First Pieces
My first pieces, prepped for sale. I’ll be selling these for just $10 each — a fraction of what I charge for my later pieces.

Why cringe? Well, most of them are terribly crude and generally immature. All those swirls — what was I thinking? This is the kind of jewelry a teenager would wear. That’s okay, but I’m not interested in making jewelry for teenagers.

Now compare those pieces to my most recent work here (and in closeups above):

Recent Wire-Wrapped Jewelry Pieces
Here are some of the pieces I created in the past week, all tagged and ready for packaging for sale. They range in price from about $40 to $50 each and are sold on a leather necklace with a hand-formed clasp.


If you like videos, try this one. It’s a show and tell for four recent pieces. (I really need to get a better setup for future videos.)

I think these designs are more finished looking and mature. (Maybe it’s just a matter of taste, though.) Not only am I using better cabochons, but I’m also wrapping them with sterling silver, although I haven’t completely given up on copper yet.

And yes, I am selling them. There’s a website where new pieces appear as they are finished: www.MLJewelryDesigns.com. There are links there to an online store. Selling them makes me happy and sad. Happy because other folks value what I do but sad because I hate to see them go.

I’ll also be at a kiosk/table at Pybus Public Market on three upcoming Saturdays, including this Saturday, March 31. I figure I’ll sit there for the day and make new pieces — maybe even some custom ones from unwrapped cabochons I’ll have on display and for sale. If you’re around, I hope you’ll stop by.

But if you’re not in the area, please do visit my online store and treat yourself or a loved one to a unique gift. I sure could use a cash inflow to feed my hobby with stones and silver wire!