T3 Week 3 - Granulation (balls!!)

Week 3 is all about granulation, or using up your scrap metal, in a really fun way. I really like granulation as you get to play with fire (safely of course). You basically raid your scrap metal pot and then melt the metal until it forms itself into a granule (ball).

This weeks task again had 2 elements, a cabochon stone set as a pendant with granulation around the bezel and then a ring with granulation. For the ring to qualify as being granulation it had to have at least 8 granules attached to it.

Scrap silver pot

melting scrp silver into granules

Granulation in pickle being cleaned prior to soldering

As you can see in the pictures below there are quite a few steps in the process. You have to start off with the backing plate to be big enough for the stone, the bezel and the graulation all to sit on it. I made the bezel first making sure it was the right size for the stone, then the bezel needs to be attached to the backing plate by soldering it on, this can be quite tricky as the bezel needs to be touching the sheet of silver all the way around or the solder won’t flow so you need enough heat over the whole silver sheet but not too much that the delicate fine silver bezel doesn’t melt in to oblivion.

Once the bezel is attached you can check that it has remained the same shape and size for the stone but it can be a risky in that the stone may get stuck if it is a really good fit, a little trick I have picked up is to use several strands of dental floss when doing this so I can get the stone out again.

Once the bezel is in place I then attached the bail and started to work on adding the granules. After all the granules are in place then the trimming of the base can happen if it is part of the design.

Adding granules to the ring

Granules all set and bail attached

After all the granules are put in place, some tidying up has been done and it is time to test my soldering skills by putting the pendant and the ring in the barrel polisher!! Well here goes.

Unfortunately some of the granulation didn’t survive the polisher, but that is a good thing because I was able to fix them before they potentially could go to a customer.

Come and let me know your thoughts below on granulation as a style. Would you wear a piece with granulation.

Finished ring

Finished pendant