Friday night's pubcrawl left me a charming shade of green for Saturday morning's jewelery class. I tried my best to hold it together. Today was the day I was going to set my stone.
I had spent about three weeks making a flat setting for the stone. We started with just a peice of sterling silver. We needed to shape it perfectly and then add four prongs. It involved a lot of small detail work, fine polishing. But at last, i was ready -- all I had to do was pop the stone in, tap the prongs over and I would be done.
In the background, I heard another classmate making a ring. tap. tap. tap. The instructor walked over to her and told her to hammer like a man. She needed more TAP TAP TAP.
I was set up to hammer my prongs. I didn't go quite TAP TAP TAP, but I did go tap, Tap, TAp. The first prong hung to the stone nicely. The second prong fell off. Yep, off. Due to a bad soldering job, and too much TAP. I was left without a prong. And left with one heck of a challenging repair job.
The instructor looked at me, and the look of defeat on my face and said: "You didn't have to hit it that hard. Light touch is better when tapping prongs."
"I know, but you had just told Roxy to hammer like a man, and I guess that kind of stuck in my head. But I get it now, when prongs are involved, you should hammer like a woman."
And as I sulked back to my workbench to repair my broken piece, the entire class burst out laughing.
I had spent about three weeks making a flat setting for the stone. We started with just a peice of sterling silver. We needed to shape it perfectly and then add four prongs. It involved a lot of small detail work, fine polishing. But at last, i was ready -- all I had to do was pop the stone in, tap the prongs over and I would be done.
In the background, I heard another classmate making a ring. tap. tap. tap. The instructor walked over to her and told her to hammer like a man. She needed more TAP TAP TAP.
I was set up to hammer my prongs. I didn't go quite TAP TAP TAP, but I did go tap, Tap, TAp. The first prong hung to the stone nicely. The second prong fell off. Yep, off. Due to a bad soldering job, and too much TAP. I was left without a prong. And left with one heck of a challenging repair job.
The instructor looked at me, and the look of defeat on my face and said: "You didn't have to hit it that hard. Light touch is better when tapping prongs."
"I know, but you had just told Roxy to hammer like a man, and I guess that kind of stuck in my head. But I get it now, when prongs are involved, you should hammer like a woman."
And as I sulked back to my workbench to repair my broken piece, the entire class burst out laughing.
