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Hollow Fabricated Ring: Finishing the Ring

Lesson 14 from: Explorations in Metalsmithing: Hollow Fabrication

Megan Auman

Hollow Fabricated Ring: Finishing the Ring

Lesson 14 from: Explorations in Metalsmithing: Hollow Fabrication

Megan Auman

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Lesson Info

14. Hollow Fabricated Ring: Finishing the Ring

Lesson Info

Hollow Fabricated Ring: Finishing the Ring

So then the next thing you may wanna do is, if you made it in brass and you've got that copper finishing or flashing, is you can use our hyper pickle. So I mixed this up from yesterday. It may or may not still work. Usually I find in my own studio I can get two days out of it depending on how much I've done with the hyper pickle, but sometimes it's a little slower the second day. So the way that hyper pickle works, for those of your who may be are more advanced and didn't watch our beginner class, and may not have heard of this, is it's literally regular pickle, so mixed about two parts, one to two parts regular pickle, so yeah, either do two to one or fifty-fifty, and then hydrogen peroxide. And the hydrogen peroxide causes it to work super fast, and so actually we can see, it's already starting to happen. Where we're starting to get some bubbles forming on the surface here, they're gonna disappear 'cause I just moved them, but we'll start to see bubbles form on the surface of this, a...

nd over time it's going to take that copper flashing off and bring it back to our brass. Whoever asked that question about also not getting their file scale off, might not be mixing their hyper pickle strong enough. So the other thing that I'll do with the hyper pickle is if it breaks down a little bit in my studio, sometimes I'll just add a little bit more hydrogen peroxide. So hydrogen peroxide, when it is exposed to light and air, becomes water, right, it's H2O2, and it loses the second O and becomes H2O. So sometimes what'll happen is it just becomes basically pickle, instead of hyper pickle, 'cause it loses the hydrogen peroxide. So I'll just toss a little bit more hydrogen peroxide in there, that it usually gets it going pretty quickly. So, that's gonna be our next step, if you're working with brass or bronze, is getting that copper plating off. We'll just leave that hanging out in there for a little while. But then your final step, before you actually do the last of your sanding is that we wanna neutralize the ring. So as I mentioned, our problem isn't that flux is gonna get stuck in there. Our problem is actually that the pickle is now gonna be in there, and if we don't neutralize that, the pickle is gonna be in there and continue to be acidic inside our ring. So it could eat our ring from the outside. So what you wanna do is, baking soda is a neutralizer for pickle. So what you wanna do is mix up a mixture of baking soda and water, just in a little beaker, just like we do with our hyper pickle. After you're done pickling, after you're done hyper pickling so the last step, and then you're gonna let it soak in that baking soda solution. You should see bubbles come out of your air holes. I usually leave it in there for a couple of hours. Give it time to really neutralize, and then take it off. And at that point, usually what I like to do is take like a rag or some paper towels, and wherever my little gap holes are, I like to put that in there to try to like absorb any liquid out of it, and let it go over time. Even doing all of that, you might find that it kind of leaks a little, so just keep an eye on it; you might have to reclean. So once you've done the hyper pickle and you've neutralized, and I usually do that after I've done all of my filing, but before I've done my sanding, so then I'll come back in, and just like with anything else we can do all of our standard finishing. So we can work through our sandpaper. Because you're putting a lot of file marks into this, you're probably gonna need to start with a more aggressive sandpaper. So you're probably gonna have to start at 150. If I have metal without a lot of scratches, I usually start at 250 or 400. With this, you're probably gonna have to start at 150, work your way through the whole course, all the way up through, and then you can finish it just like you would anything else. You can do your, your fine finishing, your finishing papers. The one thing, I think we're gonna talk about this in a little bit, I wanna say I have a slide for it. The one thing I would not do is stick this in a tumbler, especially if you have slightly bigger holes. But the tumbler is not friendly to hollow-constructed forms. So I would avoid the tumbler on these and stick to your hand finishing or your flex-shaft finishing.

Class Materials

Bonus Materials

Hollow Fabrication Supplies List

Bonus Materials with Purchase

Ring Blank Cheat Sheet

Ratings and Reviews

user-d7f7ae
 

After watching Megan solder in this class, I felt like it was something I could take on. There's a lot of soldering in this class! But there's also a lot you can do without soldering that's covered. I have a better understanding of how jewelry is made from this class. I'm looking at things that I own and thinking that I now know how to recreate them!

Silvia Rossi
 

I liked this course, Megan explains a lot of things about techniques and materials and it's simple follow all the operations to create these types of rings. I think I'd purchase other classes of her.

Student Work

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