J ewelry production in details. How jewelry masterpieces of the World level are created? How much effort is made into achieving the highest result? Many questions, on the whole, remain behind the scenes when visiting almost any jewelry store by an ordinary customer. I would like to tell you a little about how to create a particular piece of jewelry in modern technologies. In particular, we will talk about the work of the famous World brand Magerit, i.e. a copy, which I have completed shortly. If someone decides to point out plagiarism to me, in response I will say that this is a deliberate copying at the request of the customer and according to her taste in a single copy. You will not try to dissuade the customer, won't you? :- ) Naturally, I made my own contribution in the process of creating this necklace. And in fact, it often happens that in order to paint a copy of the picture, Mona Lisa's smile (for example) - you need to work hard, even with the original at hand. Actually, you can see the work descibed on my page.
What excites desire, what drives a person's consciousness in moments of choice? Of course, the answer is the simplest thing — it is a sufficient free financial budget combined with cultural characteristics, character, and finally the taste of a person as a collective characteristic. But when choosing the desired product, obviously by no means least criteria are the capabilities of the jeweler contacted. To be honest, I am convinced that if you ask any jewelry artist "on the street" about whether he is able to make a particular piece of jewelry, or even invent it, you will get a positive answer in 99% of cases, but the result, the result may be different from the one imagined. I recommend you to ask for the jeweler's portfolio, it is likely to shed light on many things.
With respect to this work — the necklace. I divided it into several difficult stages:
- Computer modeling and development
- Jewelry 3D printing
- Metal casting
- Enamelling
- Grinding-processing, fine manual finishing
- Gems setting
- Polishing
- White metal electroplating
- Laser assembling of individual parts
As a matter of fact, like almost any beginning of a jewelry individual production cycle, I started with designing a necklace in a specialized program, or even several. This is one of the most important stages in creating the form and appearance. It will be useful further for casting of gold.
When the project is ready, especially in the case of complex shapes, it is useful to make a fitting of the future jewelry, after printing it on a 3D printer made of polymer. This piece of plastic actually helps to identify many shortcomings in jewelry modeling and design at the early stages. In the future this model remains unused and serves only as a fitting material. After all the improvements to the 3D model, I print it on a different 3D printer ( Solidscape), which reproduces it not from plastic, but from fusible wax, which is ideal for jewelry metal casting. Here I will not go into details about what is necessary for casting metal - I will do it, perhaps, in a separate block.
After molding and casting from a wax model, I received the following set of parts:
Here you can clearly see how much I have to disassemble the model of a jewelry item, so that there are no difficulties at all other stages of production, and the process conforms the plan and technology.
Before manual processing, grinding a rather rough surface, I decided to apply hot enamel, since when baking enamel in a special oven at the highest temperature, the processed, smoothed surface loses its original appearance and the work has to be partially started again.
After primary grinding-processing, I fix the stones in separate elements under a microscope. We decided to use sapphires, tsavorites, natural diamonds and, as a highlight, tanzanites of unsurpassed quality. What tanzanite is, and what its value is-perhaps I will describe in a separate block because it deserves it a lot.
Before assembling all the elements, we polish it carefully, check whether the stones are well (or not) fixed in the ultrasonic cleaner. Poorly fixed ones fall out immediately, and immediately come back with an additional degree of clamping. Separately, I want to highlight the stage of applying matoir to the surface of the sculpture. I applied it with sand under pressure, which is simply named as "sandblasting". Visually, the matte surface will contrast against the background of well-polished details, this draws attention to those areas of jewelry that need to be highlighted against the background of others. Before this process stones are covered with a protective paste, it is not yet completely removed and quite visible in the photo.
And finally the assembling. Laser welding. In other times, in the absence of such technologies, it would be necessary to radically reform all stages of production and division of complex things into simple elements, since it is not possible to collect, classically solder with an open flame with all types and kinds of fixed precious inserts. Simply put, the stones will burn. Thanks to modern innovations, it is possible to use laser spot welding with a small heating area, which, of course, simplifies the process of assembling.
