Why Does Jewelry Tarnish or Oxidize?
I bring this up because it is a common question and because I recently noticed that my jewelry was tarnishing, or more appropriately, oxidizing, more quickly than usual. Before I answer the question, I want to give you a little background on metals and their alloys that will give you a better understanding of why jewelry oxidizes.
Pure metals like 24K gold and 99.9% silver tend to oxidize very slowly. However, jewelry is rarely made from pure metals because they tend to be too soft to stand up to everyday ware and tare. Consequently, metals like gold and silver are alloyed to make them stronger. For example, sterling silver jewelry is made up of 92.5% fine or pure silver and 7.5% copper. When sterling silver is exposed to the air, it will oxidize over time. The rate at which it oxidizes depends on many different factors, which I address below.
Cosmetics and Cleaning Products: What we put on our skin affects our jewelry if it is in contact with these substances. Some products are more acidic than others and can cause jewelry to tarnish. Cleaning products, like chlorine and ammonia, accelerate oxidation and should be avoided. Remove your jewelry before cleaning or wear gloves if at all possible. It is better for your jewelry and your health.
Sweat: Sweat often contains sulphur. The more you sweat, the more likely your jewelry is to tarnish. Take off your jewelry when you exercise to help minimize oxidation.
Hormones/Prescription Drugs/Body Chemistry: Changes in hormones, like during menopause, can affect the rate of oxidation of your jewelry. Prescription drugs, like sulphur drugs, antibiotics, anti-depressants and some other drugs may also have the same affect. Additionally, some of us have more acidic skin than others, due to diet or other mitigating factors. The range of skin’s acidity, in general, tends to be very small. However, it can be a possible factor in why your jewelry oxidizes more quickly than your friend’s jewelry.
What to do when your jewelry oxidizes…
There is no one-size-fits-all solution for jewelry oxidation. There are several factors that go into deciding the best method. First of all, did your jewelry already have a patina that was applied by the jewelry designer? If so, dipping it in the cleaning solutions you can buy from your local jewelry store won’t be your best choice. They tend to strip off most of the patina, leaving the jewelry looking worse than before you tried to clean it. Additionally, that solution is far too caustic for gemstones, pearls and other inclusions. I only use this to clean bright silver jewelry when it begins to tarnish.
Sunshine Cloths and Pro Polish Pads are my go-to for cleaning up everyday tarnish on jewelry. They work on bright silver or silver that was given a chemical patina. They also work on other metals as well. I am currently working on a cleaning instruction card to include with all jewelry purchases, as well an anti-tarnish strip with each jewelry purchase. These help to keep your shiny, new jewelry from oxidizing quickly. Just pop your jewelry in the little plastic bag supplied with the anti-tarnish strip when you aren’t wearing it. Click here for a short little video from Beaducation that explains the difference between Sunshine Cloths, Prop Polish Pads and anti-tarnish strips.
Please let me know if you have any questions. I’m always happy to respond!
The Making of a Zinnia Ring
Need a fresh new something to brighten up your wardrobe and your mood? I've got just the thing for you, and I'll show you some of the steps of how these cute Zinnia rings are made. They are all sterling silver, with ethically sourced tourmalines from Afghanistan. Are you drooling yet?
I can’t stop looking at them. Did those come out of me? Well, they did and I just have to move on - or do I? We shall see how you all respond to these unique, one-of-a-kind hand crafted rings.
As promised, I will show you a few steps that go into the making of the rings. Admittedly, there are a few steps missing. That’s because I’m horrible at documenting the process.
The first couple steps, which you don’t see here, are making the bezel (that little serrated wire that wraps around the stone, soldering it onto a flat piece of silver and sawing that out real close to the bezel. I like to create a double back plate to prevent solder from flowing into my little petal cut outs and make the stone sit higher.
This image here shows all the pieces soldered together, with the stone setting atop the bezel. You can’t fully drop the stone into place until you’ve soldered on the ring band, but it looks so much prettier in pictures with it setting in there! Don’t you think?
I free hand a design in pencil based on the shape of the stone. It will get a few tweaks along the way, between the drilling of the holes, the sawing of the petals and all the filing and sanding.
So, here’s the beginning of what it will look like. You see it setting atop a well used charcoal block. That’s one of the materials I solder on. It is a great reflector of heat, which helps when you have multiple layers of silver you are soldering together.
After drawing out the design, I take a nail set and create little divots inside the lines of each little petal at their widest point. This gives me a seat for my drill bit so it doesn’t skid across the surface of the silver. There’s nothing worse than that. It creates such a mess to clean up!
After all my divots are made, it’s time for drilling holes. This is normally a very easy process, but during COVID times, things aren’t always easy or normal. Right now, I have half of my tools and supplies at home and half at my studio at Blueschool Arts. One of my very favorite, and most invaluable tools, is my Foredom Flex Shaft. It’s a type of drill, but so much better. Drilling holes with it is so simple, because it has a foot petal that allows you to adjust the speed. At my home studio, there is no room for my flex shaft, so I am using a Dremel. It has a variable speed, but it starts at a much higher RPM than the flex shaft, which isn’t great when using tiny drill bits. Needless to say, creating the first ring (pictured here) was a bit of a challenge. I got everything drilled out, but I did have some skidding and rounding around the holes, which took a bit of time to clean up. I went to my regular studio at Blueschool on Tuesday to drill out the other two rings with my flex shaft with some much smaller drill bits. What a breeze that was! Everything was at the proper height. I can’t tell you how badly I wanted to scoop up my jeweler’s bench and my flex shaft and pop them in the car!!!
With my holes drilled, I could start sawing. This is where the fun begins. To create these cute little petals, I have to take one end of the saw blade out of the saw frame (not shown) and run it up through the hole in the silver and then tighten it back in the frame before I can saw around the hole to complete each petal. It might sound a bit monotonous, but it feels very meditative once you get the hang of it. Having the right saw and the right size blades makes all the difference in the world. For this ring, I used my old German saw frame that’s more than 30 years old, with a 4/0 blade. It was a bit rough going, but I think it came out pretty good. For the other two rings, I used my Knew Concepts saw frame and an 8/0 blade. I picked them up at the studio when I was drilling the holes. What a difference! When they say the right tool makes all the difference, they aren’t kidding!!!
After all the holes were sawn, I took several different needle files and smoothed out my holes. Having used a bigger blade than what was warranted, I had a bit more clean up to do with this ring. It just takes some extra time and patience, but you can smooth out all the jagged lines from the saw teeth pretty nicely.
To the right, is the top of the ring all cut out. What a satisfying moment!
Next, is finish work - cleaning up rough edges. I use needle files, 3M bristle disks and a pumice wheel in the Dremel to get the job done. This is the time where I can refine the shape of the points a bit to match up with my cutting lines or to modify if I think the shape is a bit off.
From here, it’s time to make the band and solder it to the top. I didn’t get any shots of that. Pooh!
I have found that I am really enjoying using Jessica Cote’s Hone and Highlight tumbling medium when I want to create pieces that will be given a patina, like these were. It is a ceramic medium that goes in the tumbler along with your work. I just dunk each piece in a solution of liver of sulphur and water until they are black, rinse and tumble. The medium wares away some of the patina - on the high spots - and hardens your work. With serrated bezels, I’ve found it’s best to only leave in the tumbler for an hour because the tips ware down. I imagine you could leave it in longer, but I don’t want to chance it on something precious. There’s plenty of time to experiment later - right?
To the left you see the ring fresh out of the tumbler and ready for the stone to be set. It’s in my sweet little GRS MicroBlock Ball Vise. It’s another one of my all time favorite tools! I bought it after I broke my elbow. When I was healing up, I ended up getting tendonitis and this really helped to reduce ware and tare on my arm.
At this point, all that’s left is to push the bezel over onto the stone with a bezel rocker to hold it in place, and to touch up the polish on the tips of the petal points. I wanted them to shine a bit. The Hone and Highlight leaves a more matte finish on metal. I don’t mind it for most things, but for these rings, they need a little shine!
Well, what do you think? Leave me a message in the comments. I’d love to get your feedback. If you’re interested in a ring, I am happy to take a custom order, or you can check out these rings on my website here.
Stone Setting and Finishing Tips
I’ve been working diligently the last month to create an awesome body of work that is called The Spirit Bear Collection. It challenged me in so many ways, from making tiny bezels for 6mm stones to setting square stones, soldering multiple layers of metal together and cutting out tiny stampings with my jeweler’s saw. I learned so much, solving problems as they arose. I wanted to share two of my problem solving solutions with you…
First, I had a bunch of stones that needed to be set in bezels, but the walls of the bezel cups were too high for my tiny 5mm stones. I had a few options. I could sand or file them, but that would take forever. I had read of all kinds of interesting ways to lift the stone from using sawdust to adding a piece of scrap silver under the stone. The idea of putting sawdust in a bezel cup sounds disgusting to me. What if it gets wet and molds? Scrap silver is precious, and I didn’t want the added weight since these stones were going on some large hoops. So, I decided to get inventive with a cottage cheese lid. Here comes the funny part…
I couldn’t find my paper punch, and cutting tiny circles out of a plastic lid with a pair of scissors is no fun, so I pulled out my disc cutter, found a size in the disc cutter that would be slightly smaller than the bezel, slid the cottage cheese lid into the sucker and gave the punch a gentle tap. Perfection!
You can see the little plastic discs in the silver bezel cups. I tried this with a larger stone and found that the plastic moves with the metal and it left a crease in my bezel, so I wouldn’t recommend this work around on a larger stone. Also, you must remember to take the discs out of the bezel cups/settings before soldering! The thought of melting plastic is just too much to bear - no pun intended (you know, The Spirit Bear Collection - lol!).
Usually, finishing the bezel edges after the stone is set is a breeze with a pumice wheel in my flex shaft or dremel. However, I started using a new tumbling medium that gives oxidized silver a lovely matte shimmer. But if you know anything about setting stones, there is always some clean up because the bezel pusher and/or burnisher leave a shine to the walls of the bezel. And if you are new to bezel setting, you inevitably slip and leave a scratch in some unwanted place. With this great new finish, it’s really hard to clean up those little scars.
That’s where this little piece of denim I had on my bench (from polishing wax carvings) comes in. I cut a small hole in it, just big enough for the setting to pop through. It was amazing! No longer did I have to be really careful about touching the surrounding metal and messing up the finish.
Oh, the tumbling medium I am using is from Jessica Jordan Cote @rosyrevolver. It’s called Hone and Highlight. You can find it on her website here. She recommends tumbling for 12 hours. The earring you see here was tumbled for four hours. If you tumble for longer, you get less of a shimmery finish.
Making A Ring
Serpentine and Amethyst Ring
I thought I’d share with you some of the steps in making a ring. There are five videos that go through the basic processes. Click on the Instagram link below to see how it’s made.
The first step, which I don’t show here, can sometimes take the longest. It is the design phase. I will usually trace the main element - in this case it was the green stone. Then I’ll start playing around with shapes and adding other elements, like the two fine silver balls and the little amethyst.
What you don’t see on the videos is how the band is attached and how the stones are set into their bezels. I’ll leave that to another day.
This ring design went pretty quick. I was surprised and pleased with how it all came together, being that this was my first stone set ring ever!
Make Your Own Charm Necklace