Last week I was able to get another bottoming stake head on eBay. 
What was interesting is that NOBODY else bid on it so I got for a whopping $42 and change and that included shipping. 

Here are the before and afters..

Learning to be a silversmith is not easy these days. 
First their is finding teachers for classes and of course the expense of traveling there.
Then there is getting the stakes. 

Oh, the stakes ... and we are not talking vampires here.

I have many old books, some that are 100 years old and those that are only 25 years old,  that show many stakes used for the various compound and when you go to get them they no longer being produced.  That means you only have a few choices  - get the ones that are still made from Rio, Otto Frei or other online suppliers and for those no longer made there is  eBay, Craigslist, finding a private sale or working with Kevin Potter of Potter USA to make you some custom ones. 

I have resorted to all of these.  But some of the hardest stakes to get are the stake heads that are the compound curves. Only a few of these are still made and can cost from $100 to over $200.  Luckily just a few weeks ago some went up for sale on eBay and I won 8 out of the 12 that were for sale. 

They have been in a box for the past two weeks while I took care of other matters and I finally got around to unpacking them yesterday.  The were not rusty per say but rather dirty and not the good surface one would want to use. 


I thought I would clean them today but to my surprise my shop elf took them to the garage and first went over them with a brass bristle wheel. Then the elf used special (for stakes and hammers only) cotton buffing wheel with the white (steel) compound and voila! Clean stakes. 

This post is just a week late because I finished the cuff last weekend.    BUT I now have 7 designs. With luck the Tenacious Tentacle will be finished in August which will keep me on track. 

The Koi Kuff is a teaching project as I will be teaching this design as my advanced beginner project. There is not a massive amount of repousse - mostly the fish body and the flowers.  The bulk of the work is the lining cause each of those scales is formed using an extra small curved liner. 

During the repousse, the koi body has two curves that must be taken into account - the curve across the body which is perpendicular to the back ridge of the fish and then the curve long the fish which must tapered to the front and back to give the perspective appearance of the koi swimming toward you. 

I have done this design a 4 times now but each one has one extra step - the lining, the repousse, the chasing, and lastly cut out and riveted to the leather cuff.  Actually I am doing it a 5th time but this one is for me, in silver. 

Project Name:  Koi Cuff.

Material: 20 gauge silver riveted to suede leather.

Related Posts: Prep for class,  Teaching Sample Almost Done

Major Points:

• I started this design back in 2012 but ended up doing the Calamari Cuff instead.  
  
• I put the tabs for the rivets on the outside of the raised circle to not distract from the overall design.
  
• I did the entire design in Adobe Illustrator so I can now scale it perfectly!

Lessons Learned: 

• I need a bit more practice with riveting. 
  
• Bend the piece AFTER riveting
  
• I like doing panels like this because it is enclosed in the circle and then it can be easily finished and riveted to the leather. I will be doing more of these.