Eternity Ring DVD Guide

March 1, 2010

Eternity Ring DVD is the first one in series on Advanced Jewellery Fabrication. This is to help you to make the most of it. If you do not know what I am talking about, follow this link for more information.

I am receiving a lot of emails with various questions about different aspects of the DVD. To address it - here is a write up to navigate around pitfalls of the project.

First, lets define “advanced hand fabrication”. When only hand tools and basic techniques are employed, there is always a possibility of something to go wrong and render everything a complete waste of time. It is absolutely unacceptable, from business point of view, to invest a lot of shop time and resources and be at the mercy of a chance. A number of approaches have been developed to manage the risk existing in a project of complexity. The techniques, and/or sequences of techniques, structured to manage such a risk, in conjunction with the goal of obtaining high degree of refinement, are called advanced hand fabrication.

Why projects fail?

Projects have a life span, can get sick, and can die prematurely. There are 3 basic reasons for project failure:

Flawed design

An accident

A lot of small errors accumulate and make continuation of a project an impossibility. It is only the third reason that is discussed here.

Errors can be either of technical nature ( technique was applied incorrectly ), or the timeline of a project was sequenced improperly. Some errors are fatal, while others result in degraded appearance.

The DVD shows a path leading to successful completion of the project.

You are welcome to experiment with different sequences of steps, different stone sizes, and etc... One can learn tremendous amount, simply by doing this project over and over again, trying out different variations.

Part One:

There are two things that can go wrong in Part One. The finger size must be determined accurately. The thing with eternity rings is their size cannot be changed. So from the very beginning it is important to size it correctly.

The second is not getting the joint tight enough. The inner ring will be subject to subsequent soldering. If joint is not tight, it will reflow. You should not depends on anti-flux and similar concoctions to prevent joints from reflowing. At best they are only minimally effective. A tight joint is a much better insurance against reflowing.

When joint is tight, only a tiny amount of solder enters the joint. The solder actually forms an alloy with joint material, and melting temperature of such an alloy is higher then melting temperature of solder. If joint is somewhat loose, the solder simply fills the space. There is nothing to stop such a joint from reflowing. 

Part Two:

Here I start on cluster construction by bending strip edge-wise. This is a counter-intuitive, and it has been suggested that piercing required shape from a sheet is easier and faster. My answer is that such a suggestion fails to take into account theoretical required tolerance, and what can be done using hand tools alone.

Whether this project “dies” or “lives” depends on how well inner ring fits inside the cluster. Tolerance of 0.1mm, which some say is a norm for goldsmithing, is way too loose, and 0.01mm is more realistic. But how such a small quantity can be controlled using only hand tools and only basic techniques? The trick is in understanding the reason for such close tolerances and using techniques where precision is natural outcome, and not the result of Herculean effort.