Liz's Jewelry Bench - Visit this page to see photos of jewelry fabrication.

Jewelry terms and techniques will be explained on this page.

We use many different materials and many different metals in our jewelry.   We frequently use 18K gold, 22K gold, sterling silver, fine silver, reticulation silver, mokume gane, shibuichi and shakudo.  Less frequently we use small amounts of 14K gold and platinum, Dixgold, copper, and brass.  We also use numerous lapidary materials along with the opals that we love.  These materials are combined in ways that we find interesting and attractive.  We hope that you will like them too.  We are always happy to explain further if you have questions about any of our jewelry pieces,  just call us or email us and ask.  We will be explaining techniques and materials on these pages as time permits.  If  there is something that you would particularly like to see explained here let us know!

Repousse and Kumihimo.

This is a repousse piece.  The "face" is hammered from the reverse side of the piece.  The cord is a kumihimo braid. 

Reticulation

One of the techniques that we use a great deal in our jewelry making is reticulation.  We reticulate various metals that we use in our jewelry because of our love of texture.  In brief, reticulation is a technique used to cause a "wrinkled" look to the surface of the desired metal.  We frequently use reticulation silver which is an alloy of  80% silver and 20% copper.   We do this by first removing the copper from the surface of the reticulation silver  by a process called depletion guiding.  We heat the metal to a high temperature and then place the metal sheet into an acid solution that dissolves the copper on the surface of the sheet leaving a pure form of the desired metal on the surface of the sheet metal.   This process is repeated several times until the surface of the sheet is pure silver and the interior of the sheet is still a combination of silver and copper.   Then the sheet is heated again until the surface is almost hot enough to melt and the torch is removed, the surface and the interior of the sheet cool at two different rates since they are essentially two different metals at this point.  The difference in the two cooling temperatures causes the metal to wrinkle up and create the reticulated surface.  Different effects can be created using this technique depending on the metals used, the degree of heat applied in the last step, and the techniques used.   We will add photos of the reticulation process as time permits.  For now we are including some of our jewelry using reticulated metals.

As you can see in the reticulated pieces below, reticulation can take many forms.  The textures created by this method can be extremely wrinkled or slightly bubbled looking.

CLICK ON THE IMAGES TO SEE AN ENLARGED PHOTO.

Dichroic Glass

We have been told that dichroic glass was invented for the space industry to fill a need for a reflective substance that was transparent.  Only a few companies in the United States are currently creating dichroic glass.  These companies may or may not be actual glass manufacturers since dichroic glass is created by putting a coating onto glass.  The process is quite technical, but in a nutshell the creators place glass in a chamber, heat the chamber, and develop a vacuum in the chamber.  Metal which is also in the chamber is then vaporized with an electron gun.  The metal forms a coating on the glass in various colors depending on the particular metal which has been vaporized.  We purchase solid colored sheets of the dichroic glass, cut it into tiny pieces and combine it with other glass colors and fire it in a kiln at very high temperatures. The resulting cabochons are then ground to shape with lapidary equipment.  This procedure is repeated many times until we have the look that we want for our cabochons.  We have found the unusual metallic appearance of these cabochons to be quite popular with our customers.  These are all one-of-a-kind pieces!

Below are two examples of dichroic cabochons set into rings.  The colors of the dichroic cabs that we create vary extremely and can be opaque or clear.  We make a lot of dichroic pins and earrings as well.

This is an unset dichroic glass cab.

All of the pieces above contain dichroic cabochons that we created.

Enamels

These are examples of some unset enamels that will eventually be set into jewelry pieces and a finished set.  Liz does the enameling and can do a facsimile of a scene or favorite collectable of yours.

This is another enamel in the aspen groove series.

These were bird of paradise pieces done while working on a bird of paradise commission piece for a customer.

This is a finished enameled set.

Combination Contest Piece

The piece of jewelry below was created as a donation for our local Volunteer Fire Department (Jefferson/Como Fire District).  We used this opportunity to illustrate the correspondence of the initial sketch to the finished piece and as an example for the Combination Contest that was about to start for The Opal List.  The idea for the contest is to use an Opal in combination with at least one other type of stone in a piece of jewelry.  Contestants are required to submit their initial sketch and a photo of the finished piece of jewelry.

We always start each piece of jewelry with a sketch even though as the piece progresses we may depart from it as circumstances require.   The plan from the start was to use reticulated silver.  We use a lot of reticulation in our work.   The opal triplet was also already determined.    We also planned to use some 18K gold decorations on the piece along with two small cabochons picked out to match the fire colors in the opal.  If you enlarge the sketch you will be able to see how really loose the sketching process is.  On some pieces there would be an interim scaled drawing on millimeter graph paper.  This particular piece did not require that kind of exactness.

The sketch

The finished piece

The finished piece was changed somewhat from the original design.   In order to keep the opal steady and protected on the bumpy reticulated surface we elected to place it into a complete bezel cup and set the cup on the reticulated surface.   Placement on the piece ended up being determined by where the bezel cup would best sit on the bumpy surface of the reticulation silver.  We had picked out two small Rhodolite garnets to use with the opal.  The unset stones under the bright lights of the bench matched the red fire colors of the opal.  When they were placed on the piece loosely along with the opal they did not appear to give the balance that we wanted.  We decided to use more 18K gold decorations than we have planned and one less garnet.  The angular nature of the opal could be echoed in a couple of little pieces of gold and the garnet cab could be balanced by some rough 18K balls.  A simple bail was added to the back of the piece for the chain.

We were pretty pleased with the piece with one exception.  The little garnet,when it was fully set, was much darker than it was sitting outside of a bezel under the light of the bench, and no longer appeared to match the opal fire.  Since the little stone was already set, it was left in place and a mental note made to remember to check the "set" color of transparent stones when matching coloration in the future.   So, in doing an example for our combination contest we did indeed learn something.

Visit Liz's Jewelry Bench to see step by step jewelry fabrication.

Gold Rush Jewelry, Bead and Art Company
P.O. Box 635
Fairplay, CO 80440
719-836-2143
719-836-0831

You are welcome to call us.  These numbers ring at our home and studio which are located in the same place.  Just place your call at some reasonable hour for our time zone which is Mountain Time in the United States.  You may also contact us by email at any of the addresses below. 

goldrush@starband.net

opal@opalopal.com

sales@opalopal.com