Some More Metalsmithing

Susanne, the goldsmith I already took a class at, told me that she had another class and a place was free on Sunday. So I walked up the road with some thoughts and some of the garnets I had purchased for these occasions ;)

We milled a rather thick piece of sterling and I formed it to fit my wrist. I soldered on the setting and stamped some viking age designs into the metal. And then I began to set my first stone, something I wanted to do for ages :)

 I'm also trying some techniques at home, with less expensive materials, just to practice a bit.
Here I mage some granules from srap copper pieces and sweat solderes them onto copper sheet, together with a simple setting.

After pickling:

Sawing out the shape of the pendant:

I set a simple glass pebble into the pendant. I love the contrast of the blue and copper :)
On the other pendant I tried my new dapping dies cube. I soldered some copper granules to the inside of the bowl-shaped pendant.

And I messed around with brass a bit. Not yet excactly what I want, but I know what to do better next time :)

I also made this landscape pendant for my love. It depicts a landscape where he spent many happy days.
I sanded the pendant a bit more after taking this photo, here it still looks a bit messy, but you can get the idea, I think :)

Little Seax

My love gave me a lovely three layer laminate seax blade which he made out of mild steel and carburized spring steel. Some time ago he used to give complete knives to me, now it's only just the blades. So, work had to be done ;)

First I gave the blade a bit of etching and polishing.

 Then I put on a handle from pieces of reindeer antler, walnut, olive ash and some leather.

 Going artistic ;)

To give some highlights I put in some garnets and a bit of nickel silver.

The patterns are based on fnds from Birka and Gniezdowo.

So, now it seems I have to think about a decent sheath design ;)