A quick post this morning as I get ready for the day with out of town guests. I set this blue impression jasper stone into a pendant yesterday. I started it in my soldering class and finished it at 3:00am today! It's going to be a tough day for me today as I face it on 3 hours of sleep. I'm getting just a little obsessed here. I need some balance.
While setting this stone, I put a number of surface scratches in it. I tried polishing it with some of my metal polishes and added a bit of wax. That hides the scratches pretty well, but I'm wondering if anyone has some advice for me about how to polish out the fine scratches that I see when looking from the side. I'll try tumbling it later on, but I really have no experience with this sort of thing yet. I know it was foolish of me to not cover the stone while setting it, but... I guess I was just too lazy...which is a shame.
I think I'll be keeping this one for my own wear, as it has a sloppy solder on the bezel wire. It looks like I almost fried the metal. I may dip the whole thing in liver of sulfur; that might hide the mark. This was an experiment and my first time soldering at home. For now I'm using a propane torch and the heat is a little different than the acetylene ones we use in class. It will take some getting used to. But overall, my soldering skills are improving nicely. I'm loving working with fire.
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It looks like this stone could also be called aqua terra jasper. It's very soft and porous. I have some stones that I inadvertently damaged as well. Am trying to salvage them with some canola oil gently wiped on and left to set. As it's absorbed it's bringing the color back, but it doesn't look natural and I may have to replace them in the piece. Bummer.
ReplyDeleteOH, and don't tumble it!!! That will make it worse. I screwed up mine even after doing a test tumble...the stone I used didn't look too beat up, but the stones in my piece did. Ugh.
ReplyDeleteI don't have any advice to offer on the scratches. It's a pretty stone and I like the simplicity of the setting.
ReplyDeleteNice to hear you like soldering! I know I do too. Anxious to see more!
Thank you for the warning to not tumble! I would hate to make it any worse than it already is. It is a very soft stone. In my experiments with setting stones, I'm using less expensive stones, like this one, and saving a few really nice stones in my collection for later, when I know I can do them justice.
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