South Seas, almost complete

Piece complete except for the ending and the clasp.  Haven't decided what to do there.

The design of the necklace was inspired by a piece by Sydney Lynch, one of the artists featured in "Jewelry Design Challenge" edited by Linda Kopp.

Sydney used sterling silver tubing, all cut to the same length, South Seas uses copper tubing (from Metalliferous), random cut and textured, and treated with Cool Tools Patina Gel (LOS). With jump rings, by me. and copper beads from Blue Mud, strung on black greek leather cord from Monsterslayer.

Drops are all ocean jasper (most from Ebay sellers), on copper wire with balled ends.

One reason to put the ocean jasper beads on drops.  Greek cord won't go through the holes.  18 gauge wire will rarely go through without re-drilling, and sometimes 20 gauge won't go through on long shape beads because the manufacturer's drills aren't long enough, so they drill part way from one end, the turn the bead and drill back, hoping the two drill holes meet.  More often than not, they don't. What is really a strange thing is a bead with two different sized holes! 18 g fits one side, but only 20 g on the other. Strange.  The long bead on the left had one end where a piece had cracked off.  To even the end up I used an aluminum oxide cut-off wheel (with water) in flex-shaft.  Took about 20 minutes, worth it to save a nicely patterned bead.

Cool Tool's Patina Get is great stuff to work with, still stinky though, as you might expect with liver of sulfur.  Where lump los quickly loses it's effectiveness with exposure to air, you can leave Patina Gel container open and it doesn't degrade. Plus, it's much easier to get the strength of solution you desire, and it will work with cool water.  Just slower working.

Thanks for taking a look.