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The Snow QueenBy Lexi Erickson

Originally published in Lapidary Journal Jewelry Artist, April/May 2020

©Peak Media Properties, LLC. All rights reserved. Peak Media Properties grants permission for any or all pages in this issue to be copied for personal use. Join the online jewelry community at www.Interweave.com.

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MY FAVORITE STORY is Hans Christian Ander-sen’s “The Snow Queen.”

I’d been wanting to create work to honor her for some time, but Disney beat me to it. I didn’t want to do something that looked like Frozen, no matter how delightful you think the movie is. Then, this past October, we had an early snowstorm and I happened to be outside when it arrived. Suddenly vicious 60 mile an hour winds roared in from nowhere, dropping the temperature 40 degrees in under an hour. The Snow Queen had blown in with a vengeance, whipping the glorious autumn leaves from the trees and leaving nothing but white snow and bare branches outside — and the idea for this design in my head.

PREPARE THE METALBefore texturing the metal for your back plate, cut a sheet to the approximate size you need but do not yet saw out the shape of the piece. If you cut the back plate into the final shape and then run it through the rolling mill, the shape will be distorted. Anneal the piece of metal. Quench and dry. This will help the leaves used with the mill make deeper impressions on the metal. Position the leaves on the metal and run through the rolling mill. Tip: Make sure you dry the metal

well before rolling it through the mill. If you use slightly damp leaves, clean the rollers with a spray of machine oil, sand the rollers with fine sandpa-per, and dry with a microfiber cloth. Rollers can rust.

1 This is the back plate with the leaf impressions, ready for the pattern

to be glued on with a glue stick and sawed out. I cut the back plate to resemble a leaf, yet wanted a texture pattern of leafless tree branches, like trees in winter.

FIT A CURVED STONE

2 Sometimes drusies aren’t flat. If your stone isn’t flat, after sawing

and filing to your satisfaction, you must fit the metal to the stone becaue it‘s pretty impossible to do it the other way around and flatten out a curved stone. I used a weighted rawhide mallet on an anvil to match the metal to the curvature of the stone. It takes some patience, so gently hammer and fit, and hammer some more and fit. If you have to

Inspiration delivered on a fierce winter wind By Lexi Erickson

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Snow QueenThe


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TIME IT TOOKAbout 2 hours

SKILLSSolderingStone settingMetalworking

MATERIALS• 20-22 gauge sterling sheet,

the size of your stones

• 1x4mm flat wire, enough for the partial bezel and full bezel

• 6" 16-gauge sterling round wire

• Real leaf (not dried), or Decorative Accents leaf, available at craft stores

• Hard, medium, easy solder rolled through the mill on a tight setting

• Glue stick or rubber cement

• 1 blue lace drusy stone

• 1 round coconut agate

• 3.5mm sterling tube set

• 3.5mm Swiss Blue topaz

• Mechanical pencil lead

TOOLSGeneral: Weighted raw hide mallet; flex shaft or Dremel; #55 drill bit; rolling mill; jeweler’s saw and #3 /0 saw blades; Wubbers medium and large oval mandrel pliers; metal punch; metal bench block; heavy metal mallet; thin black Sharpie; Fretz HMR 12,

sharp texturing hammer; #2, #4 Glardon needle files; flat nose pliers; round nose pliers; snowflake stamp; Lasco SG250 diamond tool, 200 gritSoldering: Torch, flux, pickle, charcoal block, Firebrick, pickle pot, solder pickFinishing: 4 3M radial bristle discs on a small mandrel (light green) or rouge on a muslin buff; Dawn detergent and toothbrush; burnisher; safety glasses or Craft OpticsOptional: Anvil

SOURCESSterling and flat wire available from Santa Fe Jeweler’s Supply, www.sfjs.net. Blue lace drusy agate from www.theclamshell.net, and coconut agate from [email protected] or Sandra Severini on Facebook. Most of the tools and materials for this project are available from well-stocked jewelry supply vendors.

What You Need

Jewelry Project


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Jewelry Project THE SNOW QUEEN

hammer a lot and the metal still isn’t moving, you may have to anneal the metal again using a rawhide or Delrin mallet. A metal hammer will mar your texture and maybe the anvil. Tip: If you don’t have an anvil, you

may also use special forming pliers to bend the metal. Do this gently, just a bit at a time: don’t rush or try to force the metal too much. I found the oval Wubbers work best (rounds work, also) to tweak the metal into the final, exact position.

BEZELS AND PRONGSFit the 1x4 mm flat wire around the round coconut agate as you would any other bezel wire. File and fit. Set aside. Now fit another piece of 1mm flat wire along one side of the stone, annealing the wire as need to make it follow the curvature of the stone. When that is finished, set aside. Cut the 16-gauge wire into 1.25" seg-ments (I cut three, just in case!) and draw a large bead (approximately 2-3 mm) on each one. Pickle and rinse.

3 Lay the three 16-gauge wires on a bench block and hammer the

balls flat with a heavy metal mallet. File the flattened balls as needed, and stamp the balls on one side with a snowflake design.

SOLDERINGHere’s where it gets tricky. Pick whichever option you prefer.

Option A: Set everything up on the back plate and decide where the partial bezel will go. Hold the partial bezel steady. With the Sharpie, draw a line along the outside of the flat wire. Measure the stone with a caliper, then place the caliper on the back plate and mark where the holes will need to be drilled for the prongs. Punch two divots into the back plate, then drill holes to hold the two 16-gauge wires.

Option B: Solder the flat wire bezel and round bezel down first with medium solder. Pickle and rinse. Lay the stone up against the partial bezel, and with the Sharpie mark where the prongs will go. Drill two holes. Fit the wires into the holes. It

should be a perfect fit. A 16-gauge wire will fit into a hole drilled by a #55 drill bit every time!

4 Pickle everything, rinse, and flux now. Set everything up at once

on your brick. Push the 16-gauge wires into the holes. Estimate the height needed to hold the stone and push the rest of the wires into the charcoal or firebrick, making sure the snowflake design is facing the outside of the piece. Cut two small pallions of medium solder and lay these alongside and standing up against the wires. Don’t let them fall over onto the back plate or you may end up with a big blob on your beautifully textured back.

If you have not soldered the bezels down already (Option B above), put the pallions to run along the inside of the partial bezel and put pallions inside the round bezel. Heat, and if needed, use the torch to pull the solder around the bezels. Also watch the solder on the wires carefully. Don’t melt the wires, but use the torch to pull the solder around and up

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Keep a little package of mechanical pencil lead handy, and use a piece as a spacer between two bezels

you want to solder close together onto a back plate. The lead will keep them from sticking together and staying soldered for life.

TIP!


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the wire. Quench slowly in water and then pickle and rinse. Tip: I use an old Altoids box to

hold my charcoal, which I usually use only with gold, preferring a kiln brick for everything else. It helps that my gold pieces are never larger than the Altoids box. Charcoal bricks always crack, even when wrapped with bailing wire. I use a jeweler’s saw on a new brick (take it outside) and saw the brick to fit inside the tin. This helps keep the charcoal brick together. After I use the brick, I drench the Altoids box with the brick still in it in water. This keeps the charcoal from continuously burning and leaving me with a pile of ashes inside the box, and it keeps me from having a still burning brick on my bench. This brick has now been used for six or seven years.

5 Check to make sure the piece still fits the curvature of the

stone and the wires and bezels are soldered down properly. Check the fit of the stone in the opening, remove, and wrap the piece in a

microfiber towel to dry. Pat yourself on the back. Good job. Everything fits. I can hear you saying “Woohoo!” — but we have a few more solders to go. (You can do it!)

Every Snow Queen needs a tiara, and this one is simple. I like tube sets because they add that teeny bit of sparkle and elegance. However, the most expensive way to buy metal is in tube form, and I really don’t want to tie up $500 in tubes just so I have a 3, 3.5, 4 etc. millimeter tube on hand. It’s so much less expensive for me to purchase three or four manufactured tube sets in different sizes. It’s quicker, too.Yeah, I know how to do ‘em, and I teach it, too, it’s just a royal pain to make them!

Choose an appropriate size stone, and check to see if fits in the tube. I chose the Swiss Blue topaz just because I love the color, but any stone looks good in a tiara. Fit the tube set onto the back plate, flux the piece, and drop a small pallion down into the tube set. You have to let the flame play over the entire piece so that most of the back plate will be

hot. Watch the prongs carefully, and watch for the bright line of solder to flow around the tube set. When it’s done, pickle and rinse.

6 Here’s a great tip! You’ve noticed how small pieces seem to float

on a bed of flux when the flux gets hot and liquifies? (Grrrrrrrrr!) This is especially annoying when soldering two bezels close together and one of the bezels gets stuck to the other. When that happens, they are soldered for life: those little things just won’t separate for love or money. And because they’re soldered together, they won’t close properly. That’s usually an “Aw *%$#” moment, right? Well, keep a little package of mechanical pencil lead handy and use a piece as a spacer between the two bezels: you won’t have bezels that stick together anymore. Neither will the lead stick to the back plate. Problem solved.

7 To make a bail, cut a piece of sterling about 2" x ¼". Use the

stamp to put random snowflakes all over the bail. Let some seem to be falling off the metal, in every direc-tion, the way snowflakes fall. Using the Wubbers round or oval bail making pliers, bend the silver into a question mark.

I chose to place the bail to make the Queen look like she was blowing into town, a frigid blast of wind and snow, but you may choose to have her more vertical: either will work. Flux the back of the pendant and sweat solder some easy solder on the

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back, and pickle. Grab an old solder brick and dig some holes in it with the solder pick, then fit the prongs into the holes. This keeps the shape of the curved back plate and also keeps the prongs from falling off. Solder the bail onto the back plate. Pickle and rinse.

FINISHING

8 Run the Lasco diamond tool at a 45° angle inside the round bezel

where it meets the back plate. This takes some skill, but done right this creates a little groove and the stone will click right into place.

Gently push the bezel over just a tiny bit. This stone has been cut so I may use the Fretz sharp hammer along the top without damaging the stone. You can also use a straight punch and hammer the bezel over to create a textured fur hood for the Snow Queen. I love the coconut agate. It looks like porcelain.

9 Check and see if the seat is deep enough for the faceted stone. If

not, you may have to use a setting bur to make the seat a bit deeper. Set the faceted stone in the tube set and close with the tube setting tool.

Burnish all the edges, going in and out of the creases of the leaf-textured back plate. This gives the piece an extra sparkle. Finish with the Dremel and rouge on a muslin buff or use a light green radial bristle disc for

a shiny polish and wash with Dawn detergent and a tooth brush. Place the blue lace drusy up against the partial bezel. Close the prongs with your fingers. Drusy agate is pretty durable, so it shouldn’t give you any problem.

A beautiful Snow Queen, blowing into town against the backdrop of the bare winter trees. Wear her strung on pearls or crystals and be the Queen that you are.

LEXI ERICKSON is a Contributing Editor to Lapidary Journal Jewelry Artist and Jewelry Making Daily. She has taught high school through university level jewelry and metalsmithing. Lexi lives in Highlands Ranch, Colorado, with her family and two obnoxious and loving bichons, and teaches private lessons in her studio. She can be reached at www.lexierickson.com.

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