Back from Silver Workshop in St. Louis

I returned Sunday night from St. Louis and a 2 day class in silver chain making at SIU at Edwardsville. It was wonderful to work in a metal lab with so many versatile and expensive pieces of equipment. I wish I had brought some silver plate to run through the rolling mill to get some patterns on silver. Maybe another time. We first made a chain - I think called the Helm chain - but I prefer to call it the Floating Ring chain. I plan to make it again using 14K gold filled wire as the floating ring. I think that will be striking.

Next we used a wooden started that our instructor, Harold Siegal, made and began construction on a Turkish chain. Are the Turkish the people who had the whirling dirvishes?? That's what I began to feel like as I worked on that chain - really difficult. I finally began to get the hang of it and it was time to go home. On Sunday we worked on a chain that used large fused 16 ga silver rings that we stretched and small sterling silver rings.. Harold was featured in the spring issue of Step by Step Wire magazine with this chain. It does make a very attractive chain. Working on all these made me eager to get home and get to my bench again. I'll post what I accomplished at the workshop tomorrow.