No, I'm not appealing to you for billions of dollars (but if you're offering I certainly wouldn't think of offending you by refusing), this is a different kind of bailout...more of an all out "bail-out".
I've spent the past few studio days fabricating my bails. I developed this design years ago, and you would think that by now I could whip them out like crazy, but no, my bails are very time consuming and labor-intensive to produce. I suppose I could just order pre-made bails and solder them to my pieces, but then, no, I really couldn't. Maybe this is going a bit too far for something that most people will never see since they end up on the backs of pieces, but I wouldn't think of putting anything else there.
One thing that has helped out tremendously is this handy little jig. Saves me tons of time (and waste) by getting my angles just right every time:
So, after cutting all of the pieces I need I wind up with a bunch of little angled tubes:
Then I file the bottoms flat, and later I file the little "peek" (see below). This is one of the details I love most about this design, not only is it pleasing to look at in and of itself, but once you put the pendant on a chain you get a little glimpse of that chain through this precious "peek".
(You can also see one of my stars in this image...during a resin pour years ago a drop of resin ended up on my work surface and I decided I would make use of the drop rather than just wipe it off, so my desk wound up with a permanent star on it. I love those stars!)
And here are my finished bails, ready to be soldered.
And there's the studio update for today...final assembly isn't too far off!
-c
