This is one of the projects I have been working on recently – a bubble drop pendant made from Argentium silver, a sterling silver bail and tinted resin.
I love working with Argentium silver (sterling silver that has a small amount of germanium replacing some of the copper content). Argentium silver has a silver content of 93.5%, slightly higher than conventional sterling silver.
Why do I love working with Argentium silver? It does not fire scale and is really easy to fuse, which I find easier than soldering. Argentium silver can be hardened by baking in a conventional oven, which means I can work with dead soft wire/sheet, shape as desired and then bake it to harden sufficiently to be worn. On top of this, Argentium silver is highly tarnish resistant.
- Shaping the wire circles using pliers.
- All of the wire circles placed on my charcoal block, ready to fuse together.
- Fusing the circles together.
- Soldering the bail onto the pendant.
- Hammering the pendant flat.
- Ready to fill with resin – I stick the pendant onto tape so the resin does not run outside the shape.
- Filling the pendant with resin.
- The filled pendant – if you look closely you can see all of the air bubbles that need to be removed.
- After lightly heating the resin with a torch to remove air bubbles.
- This is what the pendant looks like when I remove the tape backing. To finish the surface of the resin I need to either sand the resin (for a matte finish) or coat with another layer of resin (for a gloss finish). I decided to make this pendant reversible with a matte finish on one side and a gloss finish on the other.