Yesterday was not a great. Not because of it being Friday 13th; I don’t believe bad luck was so much the cause as my stupidity was. I had both sides of my handle pressed but I needed more depth so as soon I got into university I went straight to work. Things were going so well until…my one of the pressings split.
Back to the drawing board. I started making a replacement. Fortunately I had a spare rectangular sheet of nickel. I pressed that sheet using 4000psi1 that I had pressed the wrong side of the handle. Silly, silly me.
Vicious cycle. My day was basically spent pressing2. Although my friend Nadia did give me a good laugh. Look at what she did to my handle prototype:
Those were her thoughts then. Although in a speech bubble she is referring to me, quote: “She broke it!! She broke it!!” That wasn’t to do with the split in the pressing but more with the bench. No, I didn’t go Incredible Hulk on it, I was trying to fix the lether tray-thing but ended up doing more damage. Whoops. My patch up job wasn’t too bad though, I don’t think so anyway.
Mrs Betsy Factoid:
- Name: Mrs Betsy
- D.O.B: 12th March
- Height: 160mm
- P.O.B: School Of Jewellery, Birmingham
- Personality: She is a little self-absorbed and high maintenance; needing a make-over3 should someone touch her body décor. Outspoken and clever; barely 2 hours old she learnt to spell “difficulty”. Mrs Betsy is cheeky but altogether and all-rounder. Well…maybe not.
- 4000psi doesn’t give a lot of depth but in order to increase the depth we have to saw off more of the flange; the waste metal around the pressing).), then sawed off the excess metal, leaving a 5mm border around the pressing. Sawing took a long, long time but after 45 minutes+ I was there. Jogged back down to the basement to anneal my metal before pressing to 6000psi. Went back cut more off the flange but realised ((Thanks to the lecturer. [↩]
- Good work out though.
[↩] - Her stylist is Nadia. [↩]





Welcome to my - Annie's - personal blog. Here is where you can read my ramblings and feeble attempts at humour.










