Birds have always fascinated me. The freedom of flight has played a large inspiration in my life as I've studied aerospace engineering. In contrast, hiking through the woods and hearing the different bird song has always been an extremely relaxing activity for me. From these two different perspectives, I suppose it shouldn't be too much of a surprise that I'd make some bird themed jewelry!
I have seen a number of examples of feather cuffs before, and thought it's time for me to give it a try myself. As a part of this, I wanted to experiment with some new techniques to template patterns before sawing them out. I've gotten good at using the jeweler's saw in general, but I want my feathers to have a little character to them -- I wanted the feathers to have some gaps and look "real".
To achieve this, I printed out some silhouettes of feathers with my label printer. I then cut them out and applied one to my copper sheet. Using a sticker for a template like this made the process a lot easier for me to cut it out.
Once I had this rough shape, I cut out the notches and filed it down, being sure to also file down the points to make sure it's safe for someone to wear this piece! As I was working on this, I didn't like the bit of stem on the sheet metal; it wasn't quite working with the wire that gets soldered on in the next step. So I cut it off, and bring this consideration in for my future feathers.
I then solder some eight gauge copper wire to the feather, acting as a stem. I am not quite a fan of how heavy it is, so I start using 10 gauge wire instead on my next attempt. I wrap the wire around on a cuff mandrill, hammering the feather down as well. The wire wraps around quite a bit and I think it provides an interesting base.
On the second one, I use two feathers on either end of the 10 gauge wire, choosing a large focus piece and a small accent feather.
I still need to apply some finishing touches to both of these before they can hit the store. There's some solder I still need to clean up and they can use a good polish. But I'm very happy with how these came out! Next I want to experiment with tapering the wire down as it runs the length of the feather, and maybe apply a blue patina to one set?
These will be featured at Made in Tucson on November 30th, so you can see them up close and personal there! I'm also going to try making one with a nice long roadrunners tail feather, to go with the markets mascot!
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