We’ve just finished this piece which was commissioned by a local scouts club as a presentation. For anyone who has been in the scouts you’ll recognise it’s a silver model of a woggle that you use to tie your scarf. It looks simply enough to plait some silver wire but the challenge was to get the silver to behave like the leather that is used in the original.

It took alot of annealing to get the silver wire malleable enough to plait, so what looks like three easy steps in these photos actually was spread out over a few days work!

The Finished Product

This piece is modelled on a Tootsie Roll ( really good sweets only available in America ..unfortunately!) The pendant is made up of a solid bar of silver which we brought down in size to match the diametre of the actual sweet. By pulling the bar through a draw plate you can slowly reduce the size or change the shape. We made two claw style settings to replicate the twist of the wrapper which we then set with cubic zirconias. This picture shows the piece when it had been soldered together before the setting, engraving and polishing.

unfinished soldered piece

In a fully equipped workshop like ours it is possible to make anything you want. Mostly customers come to us with ideas and we work with them on finalising the overall design. So it’s always interesting when you get an unusual request like this!

Finished pendant

I’m putting up a picture of my bench if you can look past the mess it shows some of the tools we use! The yellow dockets are used for each job that comes in to the workshop.

• The V shaped board on the front, called a peg, is used to support the piece you are working on.
• Pig skin below the bench is used to collect the scrap and filings of metal that can then be remelted.
• Piercing frame (on the right) used for cutting using very fine blades.
• Mallet (right) which is made from rolled raw hide is used to shape metal without marking it.
• Ring stick (far right) used to check ring sizes.
• Solder (left) this little plastic syringe holds the solder which is in paste as it is mixed with a flux. Solder can be boughtt in wire and panel form also.
• Draw plate (left) this plate has different size holes which we use to pull wire through to bring it down in size.
• Digital callipers (left) used to give exact measurements like thickness of metal.

• Draw tongs (far left) used to pull wire through draw plates.

Eileen's Desk.