[Music]
Mark Nelson is here with us this week
and he's going to show us a bracelet
that was inspired by travels to a
Moroccan Street Fair mark this bracelet
is beautiful oh thank you you're welcome
and it looks like it's made out of
Sterling wire it is Sterling wire and uh
it's very simple to do uh what you want
to do is start with like a 10 gauge or
12 gauge wire and do some forging and
bending and come up with a really cool
bracelet oh well it's really pretty
let's get started oh get started okay um
what we're going to do is we're going to
measure it out and for a cuff bracelet
um for a woman about 5 and2 6 in is good
and this thing is so easy you can really
adjust it very easily but I did about 5
and 1/2 in and then I took a marker and
marked it about halfway okay all right
first thing we're going to do is bend it
and what I'm going to use here is some
bending pliers that bend it exactly in
the spot that I need at 90 degrees and
um this is going to make it much more
accurate and keep this design element
right in the middle so I put like that
nice little
squeeze kind of keep it straight perfect
just like that now it's going to bend
there and what we're going to
do just B start by
hand and it's okay you know if it starts
to get uneven a little bit CU like I
said we can adjust it and do things like
that now I want to do is kind of make
this a really sharp Bend by using my
steel block on a sandbag and uh the
reason I put it on a sandbag is to
deaden the sound because it's it's loud
enough as it is and if this is on a
table really loud really annoys your
neighbors so seems like it gives you a
little more control also a lot more
control it doesn't bounce around nearly
as much and you want to use a hammer
that has a flat face like a chasing
hammer in this case this is called a
planishing hammer okay so they both work
really quite well nice polished surface
on there so not to Mar the metal once
you have it bent really tight you take
the same Hammer you're can to be Dome
side and start
it hammering this out a little
flat you can make it as flat as you
like we'll start there all right and
once we have that next thing what you
need to do is kind of pull it apart that
kind of gives it the Twist and this you
do by
hand and try to bend it like right up
here really even mhm and kind of right
up to that flat part that you just
hammered yeah the tighter you get your
fingers up in here and use your thumbs
as Leverage The more you can pull it
apart yeah you can see how tight that b
is getting and plus where you hammered
it here it makes it stand up that's
really pretty exactly and then what we
can do is take this once we get to this
point and take a raw height or um dead
blow
hammer and kind of straighten it out
just a little
bit okay now what we need to do is put
some ends on here so that um gives it a
little bit of flare and a
uh wider end M and then you don't have
any sharp edges too exactly uh it's
going to help take care of that we use
the same Hammer um slightly doed face
and try and get this in the right
configuration there I kind of start back
here a little bit not right at the very
end why is that because if you start at
the very end it's a little you'll get
like this kind of mushroomy thing at the
end which could be cool you know if
that's what you're looking for look
you're going for yeah so nice little
light taps to begin with and then as I
get towards the end a little
heavier so you're kind of pushing your
hammer down the wire as you're working
yeah cuz I'm I'm forging this is called
forging and um I'm moving that
metal like that okay can you show us
doing the other end also this one mhm
yeah
and by using the the D in it's going to
spread it out a little more evenly
so all right and that's a technique that
people also use at the end of head pins
to make a paddle head pin right just a
heavier wire more Force right okay so um
now what you can do is you can take your
files and kind of there you can see
there's a little yeah sharp Ed little
there just take a file or sandpaper kind
of you're just going to file it down
just a little bit make it nice and
smooth M and once you do so good you can
really tell on the other end the
difference where you and see how
reflective it is and shiny that's
because our Hammer was really smooth oh
okay you could get a totally different
effect if you used a texture your hammer
or something exactly mhm so once we get
to that point we need to actually make
it into a bracelet okay what we're going
to do is use a bracelet mandrel and this
one particularly is called a stepped but
has a different graduations here exactly
and the idea here is if you had a wi
sheet of metal it would stay uh flat oh
okay and they'd make them where they're
tapered like this which work great um
but when you're doing things with a
really wide metal they tend to have a
taper in them so it's similar to a ring
mandrel exactly that you get the right
size mhm and um so we know we're going
to go about to here to here in this
range okay and what I do is I start on
the ends and work towards the middle so
you can't just lay it on there you can
actually you can just start like this oh
wow but when you get to these ends right
here it's a little hard to do mhm so
what we do is we'll come over and lay
the ends right here and
just tap it
on and even though this is Ting gauge
metal which is pretty thick M um we
haven't really work hardened the metal
much mhm and so it's actually pretty
easy to move mhm um the more you hammer
it though the more it's going to get uh
work hardened and
stiff and as you're Hammer you can
always make Corrections with your
fingers at this
point and I think um I didn't understand
when I first heard about work cardening
that it is actually happening at a
molecular level pushing the metal
molecules closer together so it's making
it more stable as you work hard a lot of
people don't realize is that metal has a
grain structure kind of like wood grain
um and so you're doing is you're
compressing all those grains together
making the metal
harder and the nice thing about this
kind of bracelet is that over time you
know people what they do is they they
open and close open and close open and
close to get them on right they'll put
them on and do that right M this will
handle that really okay I'm always
concerned about eventually breaking that
it will eventually happen but um this
lasts longer than most this going to
last a long time and the rest is really
just kind of done by hand um just
forming it some more yeah until you get
it just the way you like
it
and work on the sides
here and you can actually take
this and turn it over mhm like that oh
and then you can really get that oval
bent
exactly I'm just using a C clamp here um
that way I can usually any kind of work
surface you do want to make sure it's a
pretty stable table though all right
well let's take one more look at the
Finish bracelet and you know what's
amazing is that we made this in about 5
minutes yeah that's great well thank you
so much Mark you're welcome