nhcowboy1961
Elite Cafe Member
- Joined
- Feb 27, 2008
- Messages
- 174
HI all, I tried my hand at making a sterling silver Western bright cut bracelet and like how it came out-not too bad for a first attempt Now after having made it I needed to bend it and remembered the GRS bracelet bender I use at my GRS course with Dianne Scalese last spring (worth every penny until doomsday). I recalled at the time thinking why buy one when you can make one so I finally did and it works great! Plus, it only cost me 88 cents in bolts-the metal and thermo-loc I already had on hand. Being a metal worker has its advantages and I love making tools.
I just winged the design and it only took about 1-1/2 hours or so to cut and weld together. I used an old prescription bottle cut down and bolted that onto the base and filled that in with warm thermo-loc and pressed a Round ceramic Chinese decorative ball ($1.00 at Christmas Tree Shop) to get my curve and let that harden. Then I stuck the whole thing in the snow to get the Thermo-loc base cold, warmed up another piece for the male top end (snugged over a threaded bolt and coincidentally fitting into side holes to keep it in place), added some water as a release agent to the bottom thermo loc and pressed into place and let harden.
It works like a charm and only cost me 88 cents to make-Yankee Ingenuity at its best (or for you southerners "Southern engineering OK I'm cheap, but why spend a few hundred $$ and wait for shipping when I started in the morning and had the bracelet bender made and the bracelet formed by lunch time?
If anybody wants to know more about how I made it I’d be happy to go into further details-great fun though and yet another home-made tool in the arsenal, it doesn’t get any better than that.
Paul
I just winged the design and it only took about 1-1/2 hours or so to cut and weld together. I used an old prescription bottle cut down and bolted that onto the base and filled that in with warm thermo-loc and pressed a Round ceramic Chinese decorative ball ($1.00 at Christmas Tree Shop) to get my curve and let that harden. Then I stuck the whole thing in the snow to get the Thermo-loc base cold, warmed up another piece for the male top end (snugged over a threaded bolt and coincidentally fitting into side holes to keep it in place), added some water as a release agent to the bottom thermo loc and pressed into place and let harden.
It works like a charm and only cost me 88 cents to make-Yankee Ingenuity at its best (or for you southerners "Southern engineering OK I'm cheap, but why spend a few hundred $$ and wait for shipping when I started in the morning and had the bracelet bender made and the bracelet formed by lunch time?
If anybody wants to know more about how I made it I’d be happy to go into further details-great fun though and yet another home-made tool in the arsenal, it doesn’t get any better than that.
Paul