The Filligree 50

[SVD]

Whew!

Tried my hand at doing a filligree bracelet.

Didn't come out too bad, but boy was that a lot of sawing! I think I only broke about a dozen blades.

I'll bet you can guess how many holes it's got in it, eh?

Formed it with the GRS former, finishing as usual on my bracelet mandrel with a rawhide mallet. Had a couple of bits that didn't want to form right with the former but they smoothed out while I was taking it from the circle the former gives to more of an oval.

Sorry the photo's a bit weak - got rushed on the photos and my GIMP-fu is weak. Plus, being fairly shiny silver it's not easy to get a good shot of it even with the toys I had handy. Looks pretty good in hand though.

Oh yes - the background image is from the Astronomy Picture Of The Day

[Gemsetterchris]

Good effort , quite tricky to hold things like that while cutting without accidentally stressing the blade..

[SVD]

Even cutting it flat I lost more than one blade to some sort of wrong move that let it suddenty torque to the side.

Someone mentioned elsewhere that it's a lot easier to get the shaping to come out right if you pierce after forming (think I'd still drill all the blasted holes while it's flat though) but as much trouble as I had doing the sawing with it flat I don't know if I'm up for trying to work on an already formed bracelet.