Before starting work on sterling silver chain mail, I always dip my pliers in Tool Magic. The plastic coating prevents the pliers from marring the silver. It also helps me keep a good grip on the rings so they don’t shoot out from the pliers. The Tool Magic coating gets raggedy after a while and needs to be reapplied-as seen in this video.
Tool Magic only costs a few bucks, and it’s worth it.
I am often asked, How do you remove tarnish from silver jewelry? There’s two answers: You can do it the wrong way, or you can use my recipe for a safe and natural tarnish remover.
Tarnex? No Way! Anti-tarnish creams and polishes damage your silver by eating into them with toxic chemicals. Forget them. Forget, also, the scrubbing, wiping, and all other “elbow grease.”
The other problem with creams is that they either do not get into all the holes, edges, and corners, or, if they do, they are nearly impossible to clean out later.
Cleaning flatware or other food serving items? Those nasty creams have chemicals that are not good for you. If they are not completely cleaned out, you will end up eating them.
Finally, if you have multiple pieces, like a handful of jewelry items, you have to do them one at a time. That’s a waste of time.
Here’s what you can do instead.
The problem: People can look at pictures of jewelry online but can’t try them on to see how they look and feel when worn.
The solution: Have pictures of the jewelry being worn.
There’s only one way to do that, and that is to take pictures of models wearing the jewelry. This means I needed
I wanted several models, with several outfits each, to provide a variety of “looks” for wearing jewelry. My thinking is that women could look at sample images the various models, think “Oh, that style is most like me,” and then see all the jewelry on that model. I ended up with four different models, and I’ll probably shoot a couple more to complete this round of images. Once I have a handful of new jewelry designs, I plan to repeat the process.
Winner of the 2016 NM State Fair Jewelry Competition–
Chainmaille class
update 10/26/2020: I no longer solder rings. Now, I weld them closed, which is stronger and cleaner. For more about welding, see my post Welding Chainmaille and Heirloom Pricing.
For the last few months, I have been working on soldering jump rings for my chainmaille jewelry. I am bringing out a line of “heirloom” jewelry in which all the rings are soldered. In most cases, chainmaille doesn’t require soldered rings: the rings won’t open unless they receive a lot of stress. For example, I have been wearing my Full Persian bracelet nearly every day for almost 2 years, and I have only had to fix one ring near the clasp.
However, with some of the designs that use larger rings in a not-so-dense pattern, the rings may begin to open over time, particularly if they get rough usage. The viperscale bracelet shown below has a big aspect ratio (AR 5.9), so the rings are not strong enough to hold up to long-term tugging or yanking. I had given one of these bracelets to a colleague, who wore it regularly. She is fairly hard on jewelry, and after 8 months, one of the rings opened and fell out. I first started thinking about soldering rings while repairing her bracelet.
Continue reading “First Heirloom Bracelet Soldered Chainmaille”
I have an order for a sterling silver Full Persian chainmaille bracelet, just like the one that I regularly wear. I didn’t have the jump rings I needed for the chainmaille bracelet, so I had to make some. That gave me a great idea: make a video so people can see all the steps to making jump rings for chainmaille.
For the second year now, I entered the NM State Fair Jewelry Competition. And for the second year, I received first place.
Last year, I submitted a sterling silver Viperscale bracelet. It was the first time I had made that design, and the first time I had seen it in Sterling Silver. Quite honestly, I was a little surprised that I won first place, but I was very pleased, too! It’s a beautiful design.
Chainmaille jewelry comes in a wide variety of quality. Some chainmaille jewelry exhibits high-quality craftsmanship, fine materials, and professional manufacturing techniques. Some chain jewelry shows sloppy work with little attention to detail and uses low-end materials. Most chainmaille jewelry is somewhere in between.
If you are interested in buying chainmaille jewelry, how do you know what you are looking at? What should you look for in chain jewelry to determine whether the piece is worth the price? Continue reading “Guide for Buying Chainmaille”
Bling with Class
Here are some tips for making sure your sterling silver chainmaille bracelet stays in top condition for years and years.
1. General cleaning
2. Light polishing – Gentle abrasive methods
3. Removing tarnish – Dipping solution method
4. Tumbling for jewelry store shine
5. Avoiding tarnish
6. Damage from stress
7. Repairs
Heavier, bolder, louder.
Made for a man who knows what he wants.
Winner of the 2015 NM State Fair Jewelry Competition-
Chainmaille class
I have been asked many times about how to remove tarnish from silver, but I was recently asked how to make silver darker. I will show you how to darken silver by using boiled eggs.
Some people like really shiny silver. Some people like silver that is darker, slightly tarnished, and antique-looking. I’m in the first group. I think highly polished silver is beautiful. If you are in the second group, this post is for you.