Video:How to Make Hammered Flower Earrings

Transcript:How to Make Hammered Flower Earrings

Hi, I'm Jeanette Caines, an instructor here at Jewelry Arts Institute, and I'm here for About.com. I'm going to show you how to make these great hammered flower earrings. I have Valerie Blum, our apprentice, here to learn along with you.

Materials Needed for Flower Earrings

We're going to use:

• 10,000 Spine Fine Silver Sheet
• 20 Gauge Sterling Silver Wire, that's going to be for our ear wires later
• Planishing Hammer
• Riveting Hammer
• Round Nose and Flat Nose Pliers
• Scissors
• File
• Torch
• Kiln
• Solder
• Tweezers

Cut Out Circles and Hammer Them

I'm going to cut out some little circles out of my 10,000's. If you have anything jagged, I would just take out a file and just lightly go over it. I'm just going to put it in a kiln for a second to anneal it to soften it up and just let them cool on my steel block. I just take a sharpie and draw a little dot in the center. It's just going to serve as a visual guide for my hammering and I'm going to hammer from that center point outward all the way around. Just slowly turn your little circle. I'll anneal it one more time and make one more trip all the way around. There's no real set time to finish. It's really when you've gotten the effect that you like.

Make Granule for Center of Earring and Solder

To make a little granule for the center, all you really need to do is cut a little piece of sheet, just heat it gently and it will form a cute little ball. I'm going to use my nice planishing hammer. That's all it takes, it doesn't take a lot of pressure. I'm going to cut a small piece of hard solder and put it directly underneath the granules. Also, remember when you solder, you also have to use flux. I put my granule right on top and I'm ready to solder. You have to heat it gently at first, because your flux may bubble up a tiny bit and your solder may move. It's not a big deal; you just re-position it again. But you notice, I'm heating the petal, the little flower, not the granule. Solder goes toward the most heat and I want it to really attach to both. I'm going to drop this in the pickle for just a couple of minutes. When we make up a fresh batch of pickle, we're going to use about a quarter of a cup of the sodium bi-sulfate per quart of water. It's extremely important to add the acid to the water, not the water to the acid. I'll take it out rinse it off.

Make Ear Wire for Flower Earring

When Valerie soldered the ear wire on, she left it long on both ends. That's going to give us enough wire to make the ear wire that goes through your ear on the top and then the little hook on the bottom that serves as a safety catch. Go and pickle it and then we'll bend our ear wire. To bend our ear wire, the most important thing you want to remember is that it needs to bend forward first before you put the curve in. That way it's going to hang nice and straight on your ear, so I usually pull my wire down toward the front of the earring and then I slide it down on my bezel mandrel and put in my nice curve. The size of the curve really depends on you because everyone's earlobes are a little bit different. Now the bottom hook is really like a little safety catch. I just bend it straight up in the air and then over to the right side in a little curve so that the bottom of your ear wire can slide in underneath it and catch it.
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