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Beautiful Crystal Necklace

J. C.

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The lessons this commissioned Fordite Cufflinks taught me

I don't make cufflinks that often because there are so many design elements that could go wrong and with a lot of soldering which can make it a really a slow painful and frustrating process,

Before lockdown I loved wearing cufflinks when delivering training or consultancy, but as a woman I always found the selection was very limited.

Now that I am a jeweller with access to amazing gemstones and pieces of Fordite, I'm now in a position to make my own amazing Fordite and semi-precious stone cufflinks from scratch using fine and sterling silver.

The last time I made a batch of cufflinks was over eight months ago and they sold out very quickly, but because of the amount of pain and anxiety I went through creating them, I was in no rush to make another batch until now.

Talking to a customer in the run-up to Christmas they reminded me of the last batch of cufflinks I made using Fordite and at the time they wanted and we're interested in buying a pair but for some reason they didn't.

Seeing me at a number of events, the lady had decided to surprise her partner with a pair of Fordite cufflinks for Christmas, and as much as I tried to put off the inevitable, as this was a commission order, I had no choice but to face my fears, put on my big girl panties and get on with making them.

With all commissions, the first part is to ask the customer what stones they want, in this instance, she waser was after some blue Fordite rectangles.

Searching through my collection, I managed to find some pretty funky ones that met my clients requirements and she choose these pair:

Blue Fordite Pairs selected by the customer for her cufflink present

And so began the process of creating the cufflinks, starting with the easiest component, the T- bar, which I measure and round off the edges before applying a texture or a pattern to them with a hammer, before soldering a half oval jump ring:

Soldering a half oval jump ting to create the T-bar of the cufflink

The next step is to create the fine and sterling silver bezel setting for the Fordite pairs, before soldering these to the T - bar to oval jump rings creating the chain of the cufflink setting. For me this is the part that is hardest and causes me so much anxiety and pain when creating cufflinks, but this time I touch lucky and I create the final cufflink settings with ease.

Always checking to ensure that the cabochons fit within the settings:

Fine and Sterling SIlver cufflink setting for the Fordite pairs

Feeling confident, or maybe over-confident, following how easy it was for me to create my first pair of cufflinks, as well as thinking, why just make one pair of cufflinks, especially as I'd found all the pairs of Fordite that I currently have in stock, I decided let's make another two pairs, a round and rectangular shape, to give my customer the option of a different pair of blue Fordite cufflinks:

Fine and Sterling SIlver bezel setting for Fordite cufflinks

Looking at the pictures I have to say I may have been a little bit heavy handed with the solder. but I always want to make ensure that the bails are secure and fit for purpose.

By now it's 12.18am, but you know how it is when you're in the making zone, and you are hyper-focused, telling yourself, let me just do this last bit before going to bed.

Creating the bails for each pair went smoothly and creating the T-bars was like slicing through butter with a hot knife, but again I may have been a little heavy handed with the solder, which may cause me some pain when it comes to soldering the chains to the bezel settings and T-bars:

T-bar Sterling SIlver setting for Fordite cufflinks

Now at 12:34am, I should have decided that this would be a great time to stop and go to bed, I have pickled the bezel settings and the T-bars, and done a clean up of all the excess solder. Laying out all the components ready to solder to create the cufflink settings:

Fine and Sterling Silver Component ready to be soldered to create a pair of cufflinks

My body was telling me to go to bed, but my mind was saying this will only take 5 minutes, 10 at most, why not just carry on and finish them so that when we wake up and come back to this later on in the day, we just need to polish and tumble, before setting the Fordite cabochons and we are finished.

Once all the components have been created cleaned, this is where things get a little tricky.

After polishing, I think the hardest part of jewellery especially, metalsmithing is soldiering, the alchemy of this is that you need to heat the metal enough so that the solder flows but doesn't melt the silver.

But as they say, all good things come to an end and when I tried soldiering the jump things to create the chains I think that lack of patience got the better of me, or maybe I was just too tired to pay attention and I just wanted to rush things.

I have to admit that I'm not the most patient of people and I do like to use the BLOW in blow torch to heat the metal up as quickly as possible to get the soldier to flow and because i prefer to usr oval jump rings, this can create a whole world of pain for me when soldering the cufflinks components together and this is one of the reasons why I procrastinate a lot before creating cufflinks.

The end result was that I kept on soldering the jump rings together whilst trying to create the chains, redoing and replacing them a number of times every time kicking myself due to my own stupidity, not a quitter, instead of admitting defeat after the first couple of errors and going to bed, I decided that maybe the next time I would crack it, until I had to admit defeat and call it a night, or early morning at it was 1:08am now:

Soldering mistakes made during the creation of the sterling silver cufflinks

Finally releasing I'm making too many silly mistake, I decided this was a sign to go to bed, sleep, rest, wake up refreshed and start again later on in tne day, and when I did get back to my jewellery bench I managed to create the cufflink settings, with no further incidents:

Fine and Sterling Silver Bezel Set Cufflink Settings

Pickled to remove the oxides and excess flux, before polishing and being tumbled, ready fro the Fordite cabochons to be set to create the final cufflinks:

Commissioned recycled fine and sterling silver rectangular Fordite cufflinks

I'm super chuffed with how the two additional cufflinks turned out, and I have to admit it was well worth the anxiety and pain that I went through to create them: