Season's Greetings

Best wishes to all!  Let us hope for a great new year in 2012!

I do regret not posting more than I have in the past.  It is challenging to find time anymore to work on making jewelry.

I did find time to experiment with the Crafted Findings Rivet System tool and found that while the tool does work, it was very difficult for me to handle, and I probably would have spent less time by doing rivets to old fashioned way.  The tool does work, and will do a nice job of setting both rivets and eyelets, but you do have to be very careful to get either rivet or eyelet exactly centered or you'll mess up.  See example at right.

Notice the copper rivet upper left and the aluminum rivet upper right inside the brass ring. These got slightly offset when the flaring tool was used.

Anyway, I might get the hang of using to tool sooner or later.  More likely later.

While not being totally satisfied with the piece, it looks just s good as some I've seen published by "experts" in the media.  With a little touching up, it can be included in a metalwork necklace.

We had a nice warm day, for this time of year, yesterday, and I was able to find some time to work in the other "studio," the garage. Annealed some metal, and pounded out some disks, ran some through the mill, so I have a number of pieces to play with when I once again find the time.