Rodney was up at 6:15am and therefore, so was I. He was picked up at 7am for a much-anticipated trek into the hills of Northern Thailand. Being a card-carrying, non-rucksack carrying wimp, I passed on the experience, but I had my own agenda plotted for the day. After a slow, quiet breakfast I wandered out of the old town and down the road to NoVɅ Artlab; I was a little nervous and a little bit excited. The butterflies in my tummy were turning somersaults in anticipation of doing something I had never done before; a jewellery class with a master silversmith. Nugoon was a sweetie; old and wise looking, long grey hair and scruffy clothes, with hands that looked surprisingly strong and somehow younger than the rest of him. Thankfully for me, he also spoke pretty good English, so with short repeated sentences, I could understand his numerous instructions. There was only one other student in the class, Mario, a rather too quiet and serious Italian. The two of us opted to make very different items, which, with only two of us in the class didn’t matter and working at our own pace Nugoon was able to teach and oversee every step of our creations. We were given examples of jewellery that we could copy, Mario picked one of the chunky rings, but I opted to make a design of my own and so had to accurately draw out a ‘no-going-back’ template on a bit of paper.
Nugoon checked how much silver we each needed and cut a flat thick strip from a large piece of sterling silver, weighed each piece and then we had to write down the weight for later assessment. The thickness of mine was too heavy for my pendant, so my square of silver was placed on a cushion of wire wool and I had to heat it with a blow torch until the silver glowed orange with a white layer on the top surface. With tweezers I then plunged it into a small bowl of cold water and was amazed that Nugoon said I could immediately pick it up with my fingers and carry it to what looked like a clothes wringer. And that’s basically what it was. I had to squeeze my square of silver between the rollers about forty times, each time rotating it ninety degrees and then pushing the lever down to make the rollers closer and closer together. This reduced the thickness of my silver to less than 1mm and made it a very wonky shape, which I had to flatten out with a hammer. Nugoon cut it back again to a small square and put the excess silver in a small plastic box at my work station, along with the paper showing my original measurement of weight. The next step was to glue my template onto one surface of the silver. I had to slap the glue on quite thickly and then smoothly roll a wooden skewer across the paper template to remove the excess glue. After a good few minutes of blowing it dry, with a fancy pink hairdryer, the paper was well stuck on and I was ready to get started on the creative bit.
Nugoon passed me a small hammer and selected a tiny chisel to mark out the four lines of my sun’s rays. It took me quite a while and it was really tricky keeping the lines smoothly continuous, plus it was hard to tell how neat they would be when the paper template was finally removed. My wise and skilled Master didn’t seem overly impressed but shrugged with some satisfaction and we moved on to the next step, the holes. Up to this point Mario had spent the whole time grinding away at his ring with a hacksaw and I was thinking he had picked a tougher and more boring task. Hmmm.
I now moved to ‘the big drill’. And it was big; I couldn’t really reach to operate it properly, so Nugoon found a stool for me to stand on and showed me how to turn it on and off and how to hold the tiny piece of silver by pressing it down on to a thick block of wood between the first and second fingers of my left hand. With my right hand, I had to lower the drill bit on to the spot where a hole was needed, and when I was happy that it was correctly positioned, I turned on the drill and using the lever kept lifting and lowering the drill bit on to the spot until it pierced the silver. I had put eight holes in my design, each one graduating down in size, which made this a slow process as it meant making eight tiny holes to start with and then changing the drill bit to the next size up. I then had to get the silver and the drill back into exactly the right spot again and go through each of the six tiny holes and make them slightly bigger. Then change the drill bit up again and repeat the process for five holes and so on until I reached what was to be the last and biggest hole at the top. Nugoon didn’t want me to keep drilling this hole as he said it would waste too much silver, so when we were happy with seven of the holes, we moved back to my work station where he set me up with a hacksaw. He screwed the blade though the tiny hole and instructed me to very slowly cut a perfect tiny circle, eeks, that wasn’t easy! When I completed the circle, the tiny piece of silver dropped on to the floor and it took us both a bit of a hunt to find it and put it in my plastic box.
Now to cut out the actual circle of the pendant. If I had thought the small circle was hard, I was now tackling using the hacksaw to try and accurately follow my pencil line to make the large circle of the outside edge. I tried so hard to move the hacksaw slowly and smoothly, gradually turning the silver as I went, but gosh it wasn’t easy. When I finished the circle and the trimmed excess was put in my plastic box, Nugoon inspected it and pointed out all the wobbly bits with disappointment on his face. It was 1 o’clock by now and the Boss called time out for lunch. Mario disappeared very quickly, so I strolled down the road to eat a Pad Thai alone and ponder upon my morning of silversmithing.
One hour later, back at my work station, Nugoon handed me a large metal file and told me to firmly grip my silver disc and to file around the edges until I had actually turned it into a perfect circle. It took a while for both of us to be happy with the shape and then Nugoon coloured the edge of the circle with a blue felt tip pen. I then had to turn on the rotary sander and carefully turn my pendant around and around until the blue felt tip mark was all gone, without making my circle wonky again. Phew, Nugoon was happy with my sanding, so I then had to repeat the process with some finer sandpaper until the edge felt smooth. At last the paper template was peeled off and I gave the pendant a good wash in soapy water; I was thinking that I must be nearly done; wrong again, there’s a fair bit more to do my dear.
Apparently my sun rays needed some definition, so I had to mix some oxide with alum in a tiny bowl and then heat it from underneath with the blow torch. Using a toothpick, I painted the heated liquid into the lines with strict instructions “only in the lines, do not drip”. Yes, I managed to drip a bit and even after I had given the whole pendant a good soapy scrub the mark wouldn’t come off, but it turned out to be not a problem. However, I could now see what Nugoon could see earlier, my lines were rather jagged. I don’t mind too much; it was a first attempt and Rodney thinks it makes them look more like sun rays than if they were perfectly smooth.
Now the large hole needed smoothing a bit; my hacksaw work had left it a bit rough, so I was back on the big drill for a quick up and down to smooth it to a slick hole like the others. Next step, yes there was more, was to heat some oxide with the Bunsen burner and then dip the whole pendent in it, followed by another cold dunking. Another rinse in soapy wash made the pendant turn a beautiful brushed silver, but it didn’t look too professional. I’ll admit to feeling a tad disappointed at this point but it turned out there was still yet more to do. Firstly, Nugoon placed it on the flat wooden block at my work station and stamped the back with the sterling silver mark and then he handed me a box of what looked like chisels with a tiny letter of the alphabet on the end. With a hammer I bashed my initials onto the back, I couldn’t think of anything more creative without more time to think about it. Now we moved to a large wooden block that had been hollowed out with a smooth curve. I placed my pendant in the bottom and with a rounded wooden hammer bashed it until the flat disc became a much nicer looking curved disc.
Now I had to make another decision; did I want my pendant to retain the brushed look or would I like it shiny? I opted for shiny, mainly because it would obviously mean there was another step in the process and my creative day wouldn’t yet be over. So I was taken to the ‘big polishing machine’ and kitted out with thick gloves. It was really hard holding my tiny curved pendant against the fast-rotating polishing roller and I could feel the heat coming through the gloves. But I kept rotating it and pressing as hard as I could for ages. Nugoon kept checking it, but wasn’t happy it was polished enough. Even when I felt that my fingers couldn’t hold it any longer, he could still see smudges, despite it looking perfectly shiny to me. Finally another good wash in detergent, and then a good polish dry, and there it was, almost complete. Nugoon pulled a piece of brown leather thonging from a drawer and fashioned a necklace strap to hang the pendant on and I proudly admired my handiwork. I’ll admit I was really rather pleased with it and couldn’t stop smiling and thanking Nugoon. To finish off the day, Nugoon gathered up the bits of silver from my plastic box and weighed them. I wrote the figure down next to the original weight and he calculated the total amount of silver that was actually used in my pendant. He then calculated the cost and sent me down to the showroom to pay for my new, handmade, personally designed, piece of jewellery. I was a very happy bunny and still feel quite proud of what I achieved that day. I don’t think I’ll ever be a master silversmith like Nugoon, but it feels like another little feather in my cap.
235 Thai baht very well spent.
