SubscribeMonday12-3-07 Buttons or Pendants?
When I sit down at my torch, that, is the question
I usually ask myself. As you can see from my
current listings this week, the buttons won.
I don’t see a whole lot of lampworkers
that produce ”Studio Buttons” for sale on Ebay.
If you know of any others I would love to see their work.
I have combined my love of “Dichroic Glass”
with my passion for producing these little collectible dichroic buttons.
When I first started making my buttons
I used brass shanks because I was told that collectors
didn’t really care about the bottoms of their buttons then
I tried using Sterling silver for my shanks and found
that they seemed to actually have some appeal to many
of my customers. It is no easy task to bury a piece of silver
that melts at 1760 degrees into a piece of glass that
becomes molten at 2000 degrees. It took much practice and
many melted pieces of silver wire to develop
a technique that works. The reason I changed from using
Sterling Silver to using .9999 Fine Silver is primarily
because it does not turn black (called fire scale) in the flame
like
it is 7.5% copper. Most people don’t know that. Some times
when you see a piece of
which stands for 92 ½% which means the remaining 7 ½% is copper.
Sterling silver is used in the majority of jewelry because it is
harder and easier to work with, but definitely not as
valuable as Fine Silver. The reason I can make Fine Silver
work as a shank is because of the size of the piece that I use.
Anything larger than 8mm across would make it impractical.
I do still use
of its harder property….in fact one of my listings this week, “Sun Spot”
has a carved
years the silver shanks will add more value and rarity to my pieces
Let me know what you think of the Silver vs. Brass shank dilemma.
Comments:
Buttontopia said:
Posted: 9:57 PM PST, 12/14/2007
indigopebble said:
Posted: 4:57 PM PST, 12/5/2007
indigopebble said:
Posted: 4:57 PM PST, 12/5/2007