Week Nine/Ten at the Appalachian Rock Shop

I can't believe we have come to the end of our ten-week silversmithing class.  It has been a wonderful adventure.  Our instructor, Jolan Naleppa, was always very thorough in instructing us not only in procedure,  but also in safety working with the various tools on hand at the shop.  The shop owner, Leslie Metarko, and her staff was always very helpful and eager to assist with our needs.  The Appalachian Rock Shop has so much to offer - from fossils and rocks to beautifully hand-crafted jewelry.  If you are from the Youngstown/Pittsburgh area, it's a must-see!  And if, like me, you want to pursue the art of making jewelry, I highly recommend their classes.

At our final  two classes, we continued our work on our bezel set ring.  We soldered the silver pieces together, filed, polished, buffed, cleaned, and finally, set our stones in the bezel.  We carefully hammered the bezel using the bezel pusher and ball portion of the hammer, bringing the bezel snug to the stone.  I used a burnishing tool to smooth the bezel further.  The last step was to give it a final polish.  This is the final result.

My thanks also to Phyllis Riegle, Riegle Design, who created the beautiful stone I used in this ring. Phyllis was also a member of our class, along with many other wonderful and accomplished women who are always continuing to learn and grow in their art of creating jewelry. Because class members are all at different levels in silversmithing, it was great fun to see what they were working on!

I plan on taking the March class, so be on the lookout for more silversmithing posts then. I hope to try out some of these new skills over the winter and will keep you posted. Have a WONDERFUL Thanksgiving holiday! Blessings, Anita