Jewelry Making

I hadn’t been to the Jewelry Making About.com site (moderated by Tammy Powley) in awhile. When I visited today, she had put up an article where she talks about the technique of annealing metal and other materials. I’ve always been interested in someday trying out techniques like metalsmithing and true wire work one of these days.

Annealing Metal, Beads and Glass Jewelry

When you anneal either metal or glass, you basically heat it up to a set temperature so that it actually strengthens the material. It is sort of contrary to what you might think; after all, most people would think heating something up at a high temperature would eventually melt it. Apparently though, there are prescribed temperatures (as well as durations of time) that these materials can be heated up to in order to reduce the stress within it.

This would make glass less susceptible to breaking as well as strengthening metal. I would guess that to do perform most of these techniques you would need some sort of kiln or at least an acetylene torch?

Well, one of these days I’d definitely like to take a look at these techniques, but for now it’s plain old wirewrapping for me.