sculpted overlay piece

[D.DOUGLAS]

I think i would really like to get into this a little more. The most difficult part was holding and cutting the little 14kt leaves. The base is sterling silver that was darkened with liver of sulfur. A fine looking spyderco now!

[Daniel Houwer]

Thats looking fine Doug.
So, did you use the overlay technique here or did you solder on the leaves and then sculpt.

[D.DOUGLAS]

Daniel, Solder the leaves and stem on to the sterling floor.sculpt and stipple and then solder the whole thing on to the knife. If it were a fine knife you could use a fine silver floor and inlay the whole piece in with no heat required. Wow that would be a lot of background removal! Just something different with alot of possibilities for some nice jewelry also.

[Carol Carter-Wientjes]

This is wonderful work! I love that you did the leaves in gold too, very nice. So how did you hold down those little gold leaves?

I just finished a couple of rings using a similar method of piercing out the ornament from 18 gauge sterling, sculpted it, then formed into a ring without even backing it. Has worked great so far.

I've seen some of the awesome jewelry in your albums and for sure, this overlaid sculpting technique is something you will run with

[D.DOUGLAS]

Carol, Thanks. I held them with a pair of end cutters most of the time up off the flat work surface while cutting out. A little tricky to be real precise but it worked when the piece got short and hard to hold. Any tool marks left would be removed in the sculpting process. I hope thats what you were asking. Were your rings pretty thick to start with before bending? Sounds interesting please post some of your work sometime.

[Carol Carter-Wientjes]

Hi Doug, I used 18 gauge (1mm) sterling, so they aren't super thick but nice & sturdy. I also soldered 14 gauge square rails on both sides of the ornament too, so that gave them addition backbone and they look more finished that way. My avatar shows 3 of them stacked together.

I'm sure the sculpting I did was shallower than you probably did on the ornament for your knife so I'm able to get away with bending the metal after the carving is done. One ring did break in two places though when I bent it around the ring mandrel, so that told me that the carving was too deep in those spots and to back off more there next time.

Jewelry-wise, perhaps if you plan to sculpt as deeply as in your knife, it'd be safer to overlay onto a backing or use a heavier gauge of metal (16 or even 14) if you're leaving negative space in your design. Just my opinion and maybe somebody else has some ideas about this too.

CaroL

[Soco]

i like that, got a sturdy look!