Making Copper Feather Earrings

I wanted to share some pictures of the process I go through to create a pair of copper sterling silver and brass feather earrings.

These earring are one of the few items that I make from a standard unvarying pattern I created. Because I don't have to think about each step making them, they are faster to make and the results are more predicable than my one of a kind pieces. 

But these feather earrings are a good example of some of the basic techniques I use to create many of my jewelry items.

The first step in making a piece is usually sawing the basic shape that will be the foundation of the piece, from a sheet of metal. In this picture I am starting by sawing the basic feather shapes from a sheet of copper.

After the basic form is sawed, all the edges that were sawed have to be filed smooth. When the shape has a lot of irregular edges or a lot of small details, this can take quite a while to do.

I do my soldering on a fire brick. This one is getting quite old and crumbly on top.

 Pieces that are created from metal through a process called fabrication are usually built up in layers. After the shapes of the feathers are sawed and the edges are filed smooth, I cut a piece of sterling silver wire and form it into a shape that will make a nice midrib or quill. This gets attached to the copper base using sterling silver solder and a torch. Soldering sterling silver on top of copper using silver solder can be a bit messy as the solder can flow out over the copper in patches. In some designs this can be a problem, but in feather earrings the different shades of colour that can result from this fit in with the natural colour variations that might be seen in feathers.

 The next step in making these earrings is to stamp the copper to give it some texture where it is representing the feather. This is a bit difficult because it is hard to see exactly where the stamp is sitting, and even a slightly wrong angle can throw off the general flow of the earrings.   

I then form ties on the sterling silver quills using brass wire. Once the tie is shaped, it is soldered into place on the copper back of the feather, the silver quill, and the loop where a ear hook will be connected. This is a bit tricky as it can be hard to see if all these points have been solidly attached when everything is coated with the flux, which becomes quite thick and glass like after soldering. This flux needs to be removed with a acid solution, and the parts closely inspected, before the piece can go on to be either fluxed and soldered again, or polished.

Once I am sure the parts that need to be solidly connected have been, and the pickling is finished I polish the earrings using progressively finer buffs and brushes.

I did a whole blog post on polishing which can be read here.

 Polishing is a greasy grimy dirty unpleasant finish to what was a more or less enjoyable task.  

After the earrings are polished and scrubbed off with hot water and soap, they are nearly finished and all that needs to be done is to make ear hooks out of .8mm sterling silver wire, and attach these to the feathers.

These are what they look like once they are finished. This pair is for sale on Etsy for $30.00 Canadian plus shipping.