a whole mess of pendants, my first drilled cab

Nice batch!

You've got some nice stuff going there, John! How was it drilling?

Cathy

Quite the assembly line you have there John.

Thanks all,

Jim, I'd love it if the family got involved. My wife and mother-in-law said "you should sell your pendants." I replied, "well I want to just give them to everyone I know who would like one or more." My wife replied back "Yes, but after you've done that you're going to have tons left, and you should sell *those*" - got a chuckle out of that.

peachfront, I don't know much about jump rings. I used 20ga 18ga copper wire with silver plating. I don't know if it will hold or not, but my father in law is pretty much the handiest guy I know and he said he had some solder that would work, so they were going to solder it at home.

I *did* talk to a local jewelry maker about the rings and she said that to get them to stay shut a lot of jewelry makers DO solder, but that if you use heavier wire there was a way to get them to stay shut, as follows:

• wrap the wire around a dowel or something cylindrical a handful of times.
  
• clip the rings out of the coil
  
• when you open and close them, don't stretch the ring open so the wires are in line with each other, they won't ever stay shut after that, instead open them by pulling them apart *perpindicular* to the line of the wire.
  
• when you close the ring, bend the wires back to center then rub the ends that touch back and forth several times so they rub against each other.
  

The key was not pulling the circle out of round according to her, instead pulling it open sort of like you pull a keyring open. I don't know if that makes sense, and I don't know if it will resolve the issue you are having. It seems the safest bet is to solder. I can't do that either though. I have looked into trying to meet up with a silver smith, she is interested in my stones possibly as trade for instruction in smithing. That feels a bit daunting to be honest, I am just figuring out how to tumble and cut rocks, so silver smithing seems like I may be wandering off a bit.

Anyhow, still having lots of fun and learning as I go.


*CATHY* - so here is how I drilled.

I have a folding table with a hard top that I set a small, shallow plastic container on. I used a small bar clamp that had a rubber pad on the threaded part of the clamp, and I flipped it upside down so the metal end went under the table and the rubber, threaded end was above the table and the container.

I pulled a thicker slab of some stuff I probably won't cab (call it scrap) inside the bottom of the bowl and then placed my slab of montana on top of that.

I used the bar clamp to reach over the edge of the container and threaded it tight on top of the montana, so the montana, scap and container were sandwiched together, held tight to the table.

I put enough water to just cover the top of the montana and used the dremel as instructed somewhere around here to first rough a spot and then switched bits to drill. I pulsed up and down for about 10 minutes and it cut through with no problems.

Added bonus was that the handle of the bar clamp stuck straight up and I was able to use it as a guide as I went up and down with the dremel.

I couldn't believe I didn't trash the montana, it actually worked pretty well.

Hi peachfront. I am the least qualified to speak on how to do this stuff so I hope someone more knowledgeable than me can weigh in on this.

The one thing I realized right away about drilling is that there is a relationship between how far from the edge of the stone you drill, which affects how big the diameter of the jump ring then has to be, which in turn dictates the gauge of the wire you use for the jump ring. There is also a material factor in there, if the wire you are using is soft, you probably want a larger gauge than you can get away with if the material is hard.

Having said all that I have no idea what the numbers in that equation are. Like most everything I do, for me it is "feeling it out."

I actually misspoke above when I said I used 20 gauge. I ORIGINALLY used 20 gauge, but it seemed too thin for the diameter of ring I needed given the distance of the hole from the edge of the stone. I redid it with 18 gauge and t was much more secure.

I hope that helps.

Your family is very lucky!