Breakthrough!

Well, today opened up and I decided to get into the studio again just in case my car was in the shop longer than anticipated this week. My hands are starting to stay sore, but not too badly at the moment. It's probably a good thing I'm going to be forced to take a little break. My left thumb is the worst and of course that's the digit that does most of the heavy lifting in jewelry- human clamp, grip, etc. But it was a good day! I finally finished the shaping for the bail on a setting for an enamel I did a while back. I wanted the bail to coordinate conceptually with the imagery so I was going for a sort of tree-branch look. The best part was the soldering went off without a hitch! Now I've got to solder tiny little jumprings onto the ledge of the front because I'm planning on doing an old-fashioned bead edging around the setting. Keep your fingers crossed for me!
Also, the first face pin in silver is ready to have the fine silver raised and I finished cutting out the second one. I'm going to set carnelians in the first one and I plan on sending it to Bob Coogan as a belated Christmas present as soon as it's done. Shhhhh. I included the copper prototypes in this pic so you could see what the finished pins should look like. I solder 5mm bezel cups over the eye disc and then I solder a plate with my name stamp, metal grade and copyright symbol along with the pin backs all in one go on the back. I'm starting to do many more solder seams at once with minimal pickling in between. It seems to be working just fine and definitely speeds up my production time. At this point, it looks like I'm going to have a nice little load for the tumbler here in a week or two. Some new finished pieces! I can see the light at the end of the tunnel!!!