Last weekend I went to a workshop at Davide Bigazzi's studio up in Menlo Park, California (no, not that Menlo Park - that one is in New Jersey which was where Edison had his research facility). I went with two of my friends - Diane and Sandy, so we could all learn the Italian way to Chase & Repousse and learn FLOWERS.

I am not done with my cuff YET (I will do that this weekend) and will post many pictures in my next blog post. BUT for now, the pictures I took of flowers from around studio for inspiration.

YUP, I made another ring. This is a banded agate that I bought at the same time as the druzy quartz (and there are more that are waiting). I started the setting along with the druzy's and today I finished it. 

But before I did, I cleaned up my workbench from yesterday cause I could not the setting or the stone under it all. 

I took some of the scrap bezel and made some silver balls which I soldered to the 4 points of this bezel, then soldered the shank on and polished it up. I placed the setting in my ring clamp which I then positioned in my vice. then using a small Japanese chasing hammer and 2 different sized planishing tools I set the bezel. 

Voila, it is now on my hand and it is BIG and BLING!

Two years ago when I was in Tuscon for the Gem & Mineral Show AND a workshop with Valentin, I found this druzy quartz that had been vapor coated with titanium. The color is this great blue green and I had to get it despite not really liking making regular jewelry. 

And there, in my stash, the stone has sat for two years. 

With the stress of work and life, I decided a few weeks ago to make a ring with the stone.  The only issue was the bottom of the stone is NOT flat.   I finally decided to do a stepped bezel that would still be soldered to a flat sheet, so attaching the shank would be easier. 

I have not made a ring in 4 years and as a result I created a bit of scrap getting the bezel and step just right.  I also had to grind the bezel down a bit since one end it taller than the other. 

But who cares I now have the ring!!  

Here are two pictures of the stone - you can see how the bottom is rounded. Then some pictures of the stone in the ring before I pushed the bezel in and lastly two of it on my finger with good light so you can see the colors. 

And what is that? you are asking??

If you are a regular reader of this blog, you might have noticed that I have not been writing about my metal work for a few weeks and so now I will tell you why.

Many of you do know that I have a day job - I am Senior Software Engineer and I am currently working on a big project for the United States Navy. Back in February, one of the other software engineers (and I use that term loosely) left the project leaving 3 full time developer/engineers, a full time Oracle DBA and a full time technical lead who is also a DBA and software engineer but being the technical lead he only does part time DBA work and very little coding.  When said person left, we divided the module he had been responsible for between all of us. I took 5, the other full time developers also took 4 or 5. Then the full time DBA  and the tech lead each took one as well. 

I then looked at the code in the modules I had taken responsibility for - and what a horrible mess. He had not used the framework that had been built and was being used by everyone else, did not follow the UI standards and oh so much more which I won't rant on about for at least two hours of reading.  And lets just say that the client had already complained that the UI in the modules was different.

For me (and everyone else) to maintain this code was going to be a nightmare.  I felt that the only way to maintain it and to make the UI conform to the standards was to rewrite it.  Which is what I have been doing for the past month - not just during my slack time during the week but on weekends as well.  Along the way I have found many bugs that he introduced and have been since corrected as well.  I have kept track of the time and so far it has been over 160 hours to rewrite all 5 modules. They are now on the testing server and I expect a few bugs and other tweaks will found that I will have to fix before the modules can be released to production in May or June. 

The other developers have not started their rewrites but they now know the pain, suffering and TIME they will experience. 

For me - I can now return to my metal work and not have this hanging over my head.   There has been one advantage to this break is that I  have a new stack of ideas...