If you haven’t already noticed, I am a “I’d-rather-learn-to-make-it-than-pay-someone-else” kind of person. So after learning blacksmithing in order to make hinges and nails for my woodworking, it was an easy decision to learn how to work in silver.
Notice that I said the decision was easy. The learning was anything but. Fortunately, I had a good and patient teacher in Þangbrandr Sløngvandbaugi, OL.
Þangbrandr lives in a remote forest at the end of a long, unmarked deer path. His home is guarded by ferocious wolves (okay, they might be doggos), who will allow you to pass only if you give them ear scritches for the length of time required to recite the entire Poetic Edda from memory. Or you can simply drive two hours north of Olympia, WA to get there. He makes great coffee, for which you will be extra grateful after a long, early morning drive.
My first lesson in silversmithing was to re-frame my expectations. I had arrived thinking the timeline would be something like: Arrive at 8 a.m. Melt silver into ingot at 8:05. Hammer into desired shape by –let’s say– 10 a.m. because this is my first time. Decorate silver using punches by 10:45. Polish. Crack open some beers, pass around cigars, and shoot the bull until noon. Finis.
Oh, boy, was I wrong. [Insert fatalistic laughter here.]
My expectations started meeting reality in a subtle way. Like at the beginning of a thriller, where the presence of an evil being is a mere whisper, a shadow at the corner of your eye. We fired up a propane furnace similar to the one I made and used, but for the gas jet entering at the bottom of the furnace rather than in at the side. Into the furnace went the crucible, and into the crucible went three ounces of fine silver.
Having once played with copper in my furnace, I had assumed the melting point of silver would be about the same. In actuality, silver has a lower melting point (1,763 F/968.1 C) than copper (1,984 F/1,085 C). Still, I was surprised that the silver didn’t melt within moments. It took a bit of time, maybe ten minutes, until the silver bars I had tossed in began to melt like ice cubes on hot pavement. Several minutes later, the bars had transformed into a glowing liquid weirdly swirling in the bottom of the crucible.
The molten silver was then poured into a rectangular mold. Letting it air cool exercised my patience further. I still had no idea what I was in for, though, and the true lesson was about to begin.
Silver is a “work hardening” metal. Which means that as you hammer (work) it, the metal gets stronger. The strengthening occurs because of “dislocation movements and dislocation generation” in the crystal structure of the metal (Degarmo, E. Paul; Black, J T.; Kohser, Ronald A. (2003), Materials and Processes in Manufacturing (9th ed.) pg 60). The crystal structure of the metal naturally has a regular, nearly defect-free pattern. In this state it is very malleable. But as the pattern is deformed, the malleability reduces and strength increases. Short version: the harder you hit the metal, the harder you will need to hit the next time to get the material to move. In other words, you get decreasing returns for your efforts.
To counter the work-hardening, you need to periodically anneal the metal. Annealing is the process of returning the crystal structure to its natural, ordered state. To anneal silver, one heats the metal up to a dark cherry glow and then either let air cool (which takes time) or quenching in water. Heating the metal lets the molecules shift back into their preferred orientations; quenching then locks them into place. After annealing, the metal is more malleable, softer, and less brittle.
Once the cooled ingot had been retrieved from the mold, then shaping with a hammer began. To sharpen or refine the edges of the ingot, Þangbrandr had me hammering onto a swage block. A swage block can be thought of as an anvil with a shaped surface. Pounding metal on a swage block moves the metal into the shape of the surface. Swage block surfaces come in near-infinite varieties: curves of different radii; cones; valleys; et cetera. In this case, I was using a swage block with sharply delineated valleys. By moving the metal into the right angle at the bottom I was making the ingot square in cross-section and giving it 90 degree corners.
Reading the above paragraph one might be lead to believe that this was a straightforward process. However, due to the work hardening property of silver, the process was: hammer for a bit, fire up a torch, turn down the lights, heat the silver to a low glow, turn off the torch, pick the ingot up with tongs, swirl in distilled water until cool, turn the lights back up, then return to the swage block to hammer for a bit more. The lights are turned down so as to see the glow better.
By the end of Day One I was the proud owner of a three ounce bar of fine silver, with (almost) right angles on the edges and (almost) square in cross section.
Day Two began with coffee and a plan. First off, back to the swage block to finish squaring the cross-section. Yes, this involved the aforementioned cycle of hammering and annealing. The resulting bar was thicker than desired, so the remainder of the day was enjoyed by lengthening the bar (and, thus, making it thinner as the mass moved from the center outwards). If you are wondering whether doing so affected the squareness and the the edges I had worked so hard on, I think you can guess the answer. Now the cycle was: hammer for lengthening; anneal; re-square; anneal; repeat. At the end of Day Two, I had gotten the bar to the right thinness for the bracelet I wated to make and it was twice as long as necessary, so I finished the day by carefully sawing it in half.
For the bracelet I was wanting to make, the ends of the bracelet would need to be tapered. Day Three was spent in much the same way as Day Two, with the difference being that I worked the mass outwards just from the very tips to only a third of the way in on either side. Starting at the very end: hammer; anneal; square; anneal. Then advance a little towards the center and repeat. Repeat again. And again. Now do the other side.
I had high hopes for Day Four. Day Three had ended with a tapered bar of the final length and thickness. So all that needed to happen on Day Four was to bend it into an oval and decorate it, right?
Right?!?
Alas, my lessons in patience and in the re-framing of expectations were not over. Þangbrandr set me down at his jewelers bench, placed a file in my hand, and described the “mirror polish” I was to achieve. Hammering the silver had left shallow depressions or divots. Filing the silver was a process of removing layer upon layer of surface until the entirety was uniform with the bottom of the lowest divot. Because every pass of the file left a uniform surface area greater than the previous pass, therefore each subsequent pass had to remove more material than the one before and, thus, greater and greater effort was required. Oh, that Day Four had been an action movie and all of this could have been a thirty second montage backed by a lively soundtrack. [Cue “Eye of the Tiger”.]
Day Five found me humbled. I had learned good lessons in patience and in not framing expectations around uninformed assumptions. I accepted that the process is the process and it takes as long as it is going to take. My impatience was pounded out of me at the swage block; my hubris filed into dust at the jeweler’s bench. I approached Day Five with acceptance that progress is incremental and gratitude for the opportunity to learn. The fact that I finished the bracelet that day was less a cause for celebration and more a recognition that the original goal was merely a milestone on a longer journey.
By noon, the surface of the bar was filed to uniformity across length and width. Þangbrandr showed me how to use punches to tap patterns into the surfaces of two faces. An earlier me might have pounded too hard, or set the punch without exactitude. As it was, my novice skills still resulted in some imprecision, but overall the pattern came out as intended. After another anneal, I bent the bar into an oval; first by hand and then, as the silver work-hardened, with the aid of pliers.
After a final anneal, I used a very fine abrasive to remove surface marks left by the pliers and give the surface a lovely luster.
Many thanks to Þangbrandr for the lessons, both the ones he intended and the ones I also needed. Thanks also to his charming wife Karen for opening her house to me and for her delicious oatmeal. Thanks, as well, to Alicia du Bois, for inspiring this project and letting it adorn her wrist.
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