How I made a hand forged copper bracelet.



This is what my copper jewelry starts out like.  A flat piece of 24 gauge sheet metal.  The steel block you see is  a cutting tool.  Place the selected size over the metal, and hit repeatedly with hammer onto the cuttng thing..  I am sure it has a name, I just cant think of it. lol.  This will make a nice round disc.





After much work, this is the final piece.  The long piece of copper was made from water line tubing, which I hammered until it was flat,  then I took the flex shaft tool with a sanding drum on it, and sanded down the ends and rounded the corners, and sanded the front and back as well to give it a brushed look.  Then I took the texturing hammer and beat it till it was the way  I wanted.  Then took a small piece of fine grait sand paper and looked for any rough raised edges.  OHHHH, before i sanded anything, I drilled holes in the end.

The Disks were hand sanded to remove any rough edges from the cutter.  Then drilled, (i plan on getting some metal punches very soon), then re sanded.  Yes, i should have drilled before sanding in the first place.  Lesson learned.

After sanding I got out my texturing hammer and hammered till they looked the way i wanted.  Then got out my wooded dapping block, dapping tool and hammerd till they were shaped the way I wanted. 

Then I laid out the pieces, Determined the length I wanted and used hand make copper wire jump rings to attach them together. I made a rustic looking squareish hoop, textured with hammere, and a great open spiral hook, again texturing.  and making sure there were no sharp edges anywhere.

I had spent quite a bit of time trying to do some engraving of names on pieces before doing this and I could not get it right.  The plan was to have someones name engraved on the center with a grandchild name on either side on the first disks.  I am dissapointed that I could not get it right.  But I will keep practicing and eventually it will look good and not amauterish.

Thanks for reading my blog.  Have a great day, and Keep on Creating. 

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