Gold On A Budget 2.0 with Alex Boyd

Master jeweler reveals their secrets! Craft stunning rings using minimal gold, exploring advanced techniques like soldering multi-karat bezels. This hands-on workshop is perfect for intermediate and advanced students, ready to push their metalworking skills to the next level with gold.

Description

Alex Boyd Class Alex Boyd jewelry class Alex Boyd jewelry class SLC

Description: This class is an exploration of the techniques I use in my own work to take relatively small amounts of gold and exploit them for maximum visual impact. We'll cover making an 18k wire overlay for a ring shank, fabricating bezels for cabochons in 22k gold, making a backplate for the bezel in sterling silver with a rim of 22k, and soldering all these elements together to make a completed piece. Along the way, I'll explain ways to keep the solder seams between metals crisp and clean, techniques for setting stones that leave minimal tool marks, making custom titanium soldering clips, keeping waste to a minimum, texturing, patination, and many other tips and tricks. This class doesn't require students to have taken Gold on a Budget Part 1 and is appropriate for intermediate to advanced students.

Class Kits: I will provide a variety of kits for the class with different stone options. Stones are specifically cut to require minimal bezel heights for secure setting and only the necessary amount of gold and silver is included, avoiding the costs of minimum order requirements that can make working in gold prohibitively expensive. Kits will start at $150 and include everything necessary to make the project.

Tools student needs to bring: (studio will have limited tool availability, most tools are available for purchase in our retail store.)

Fine-tipped permanent marker
Scribe
Dividers
Jewelers saw
2/0 blades
0 or 2 cut flat file
1/2 round pliers
Titanium solder pick
Flush cutters
Nylon mallet
Nylon bench block (optional)
Sanding sticks in 180, 320 and 600 grit
Loose sandpaper in same grits
2 cut square needle file
Small planishing hammer
Chain nose pliers
#4 or #5 cut flat or barrette needle file
.8mm drill bit
Superglue
Parallel pliers
Planishing press (optional)
#4 or #5 cut flat file (optional)
Round nose pliers
Burnisher

Artist Bio: Alex Boyd is a sack of chemicals and electrical impulses that somehow managed to attain self-awareness. When not consuming replacement chemicals, staring at its phone or ruminating in existential dread it compulsively creates, trying to satisfy some mysterious aesthetic sensibility that ultimately can't be satisfied. The results are objects that no one needs, some people want and a few people buy. It lives with its wife, two dogs, and a cat in Denver, Colorado.