Rings and Things and More Fishing

I checked the date on the blog and much to my surprise it has been a week since I posted. It’s not that we haven’t been busy, it’s just that I haven’t taken many images. While a fellow friend keeps weekly notes I look at my weekly images and that’s what inspires the story.

We are getting ready for one of our biggest shows and so most of the week has seen us busy finishing up orders and making rings. Lots of rings. Our friends Dave and John both invited me to go fishing and as we were out of fish I quickly accepted both their invites, (as we were out of fish).

Our new style rings have been well received. I learned the process by watching the show, “How It’s Made”. It is amazing, to me anyway, what you can learn on some of those episodes and we also spend time learning from videos on You Tube.

Step one is to select the rough stone, determine the shape, and size, and cutting the preform. Next we dop, (doping a stone involves cementing a stone to a wooden dowel using a special doping wax), the stone to make the rock manageable while grinding on our machines.  We don’t dop larger cabochons, finished semiprecious stones, as we simply hold them in our hands while working the grinding wheels.

Finally we set the stones and then finish grind the whole ring before buffing and polishing the final product. This is an image of rings set in silver using high grade Green Australian Marlborough Chrysophrase, Siberian purple charoite, light green Citron Chrysophrase, and high quality Wyoming Jade.

We are also making some Morenci Turquoise ring and blue stone rings using sodalite, Oregon Holly agate, South African tiger eye, and Namibian blue lace agate. We won’t get all of these done but that’s ok as we will have some new pieces for our summer shows.

As to the fishing, well we had to buy some fish at the fish monger so it was definitely time to get out again. From the images I post you may think we always catch fish, and while we usually do the fish are often too small to keep. I went out for two days and caught lots of small fish with John and Dave, before scoring with a limit of black drum.

Finally I must mention the daily ritual called happy hour. Our friends all gather together at four pm, some with a glass of wine or beer but not all, and discuss our day’s activities. The group usually averages fifteen to twenty and it’s going to grow in size as Renita’s sister Pam and her husband Roy are arriving next week!

Clear skies