Hand-Forged Celestial Globe Pendant

Hello fellow makers,

In my quest to make a forged piece with a bit more movement I came up with this design.

Inspired by a celestial globe I wanted the inner rings to be able to spin freely on their axis. I also chose the two beads to have somewhat of a resemblance to the moon and earth.

In the future when I'm more comfortable with fine soldering I would like to remake this with multiple spinning axis.

Join me on my journey and learn how to make your own...

To make this Instructable you will need the following:

- 3mm and 1.5mm Bronze rod

Amazon - Bronze rods

This can be found at your local hardware store in the welding/brazing section. I recommend using bronze when learning and then moving on to precious metals later.

- 1mm Copper wire

I salvaged some copper wire that was wrapped around a toroid from disposed electronic devices.

- Gemstones/Beads of your choice just make sure they are already drilled.

I used a 6mm ruby in fuchsite and a 4mm white agate bead, I wanted it to somewhat resemble the earth and moon.

You will also need some small glass seed beads to use as spacers.

Amazon - Beads

- a Split ring

- Silver and tin solder

Amazon - Silver solder

- a Butane/propane blow torch

- a Hammer

- an Anvil** (at $15 I highly recommend getting something like this)

Amazon - Anvil

Any piece of heavy metal with a smooth surface can be used, before I made myself this small jewellers anvil I used an old hammer head mounted in a vice and it worked great.

- Sanding paper 220 to 1500 grit

- Metal polishing compound blocks

Amazon - Compounding blocks

- Leather safety gloves

- Pliers

- Cutters

Optional:

- A Dremel

- Felt polishing pads

- Abrasive rubber bits

Safety first!

Always wear leather gloves and face protection when forging metals, the pieces can cause serious burns even after standing for a while. Always handle your metal as if it is hot.

Now we will need to start shaping our bronze rod.

For this pendant you need three rods, two thinner ones that will be for the inside rings and a thicker one that will form the half circle on the outside. The lengths I used are:

Large ring: 9cm

Small ring: 5cm

Half circle: 6cm

In the end I will forge around 14cm of the 1.5mm rod and 6cm of the 3mm rod to flat bar but I suggest you forge this length first before cutting off the excess as it will make handling it easier.

Now we need to anneal the bronze rod, with the butane/propane torch you need to heat up your bronze rod until it gets to a cherry red color and then quench it in a bucket of water (or if you are comfortable working with hot metal you can hot forge it without quenching first)

When the rod has reached temperature you can place the rod on the anvil and start hammering it down on one side, try to keep your hammer head as flat as possible whilst moving across the rod.

While hammering you will feel the bronze getting harder, once you feel this happening you will need to reheat the rod as above.

Flipping the rod over from time to time will help keep it straight.

Keep repeating the above until you've reduced the thickness of the rods from 1.5mm and 3mm to around 0.8mm.

Now you can reheat the rod and then place it on its side and gently hammer down the side to end up with a uniform bars that's approximately 3mm and 5mm wide and 0.8mm thick.

Cut the thinner bar you made into two pieces, one the length of the small ring and the other the length of the large ring.

Now we need to bend the two thin bars that we just forged into D shaped ovals so that we can solder them together, don't worry about how your bends look we just want to bring the two ends together for now.

Time to solder the joints.

Move the pieces to a suitable surface to solder on (I do all my soldering on an old press drill table)

Add silver solder flux and a small piece of silver solder in the joint and start heating the joint with your butane torch. When the piece reaches the melting point of the solder it will flow into joint.

Leave the pieces to cool completely.

For the next part you will need something metal that's just slightly smaller than the two rings, if you have a ring mandrel it will be much easier. I had a look around my workshop for something to use and found saw my ratchet socket set, now place your rings around whatever metal cylinders you found and gently start hammer your rings around it until they are perfectly round. Do the same with the half circle.

Now that we have our rings we are going to need to drill holes through them for the copper wire that everything will spin on.

This is not necessary but before drilling I decided to use an abrasive disk on my Dremel to make a little design element on the ends of the half circle.

Place all of the rings on a flat surface and arrange them how the final pendant will be, now using a ruler and a marker mark the line across the pendant so that you know where you will need to drill the holes. Unfortunately I don't have any additional photos as when I made it I just eyeballed the holes but it would have been much easier to mark it beforehand.

Using a 1mm drill bit drill through the center of all the rings.

Time to get rid of that fire scale!

First we are going to let the pieces sit in a pickle until all of the oxidation and soldering flux is gone.

Homemade Pickle:

1. Bring ½ cup vinegar and ½ cup water to a boil. You can use more vinegar than water. Some people even use just vinegar, no water.
2. Pour in a glass or ceramic coffee container. Hint: Make sure that the container you use for your pickle does not get used for anything else after this.
3. Add 1 tsp salt.
4. Add your metal jewelry piece, making sure that it is covered with solution. You may need to turn the piece over while it is soaking if the back of the piece sits directly on the bottom of the container. Note: Do not use pickling solution on jewelry pieces with gemstones.
5. While the piece is soaking, mix 1 teaspoon of baking soda with 1 cup of warm water in another glass or ceramic container.
6. When you see that the fire scale is gone, remove the piece from the pickling solution using a wooden pick or copper tongs. Hint: If you have heavy fire scale, you may need to reheat the solution-without the jewelry piece in it-and soak the piece again. You may even need to make new pickle solution and re-pickle.
7. Place the piece in the baking soda/water solution. This solution helps neutralize the acid in the vinegar that ate away the fire scale.
8. Rinse and dry the piece.

Next I use an abrasive rubber Dremel bit but you can also use 400 grit sanding paper to get rid any deep scratches and imperfections.

Then with a piece of sanding paper on a plane of glass I flatten the sides of all the rings.

Now we can take a felt buffing bit and some solid polishing compound and polish the rings to a nice shine.

We've reached the step when the piece starts taking shape.

First I bent a little loop in the copper wire then I suggest you go through your glass seed beads with the copper wire as I found a lot that the hole were too small, in mine I used 9 seed beads.

We need the seed beads as spacers and they act as bearings making the pendant spin freely.

Assemble your pendant as pictured, depending on the size of your rings you might need more or less beads inbetween.

When you're done just bend the end of the wire so that it doesn't pull out while you're handling it....yes...mine did...and the beads went flying everywhere!

We are now going to solder the copper wire into place.

Starting with the top/loop part make sure the wire is perfectly straight and then hold it in place at the bottom using pliers.

TIP: Grab yourself some surgical pliers like these Amazon - Surgical pliers they are high quality stainless steel self locking pliers that can take the heat when soldering.

Add a tiny amount of flux and a small piece of tin solder on top of the wire as pictured. Because this is such a tiny piece without much mechanical stresses and I didn't want to apply a lot of heat to the beads I decided to use a tin solder to do this step. With your butane torch and a low flame gently heat up the joint until the solder flows in around the wire.

Flip it over and repeat on the other side.

Leave the piece to cool completely then you can use a piece of sanding paper to just flatten the bottom wire where you soldered.

Now you can just give it a light polish with some liquid polish to get rid of any new oxidation that might of occurred whilst soldering the wire.

Add a split ring and your pendant is done!

That's it!

Now just add your favorite chain/leather cord and it's ready to wear, I used some super soft deerskin leather cord from Amazon.

I hope you guys enjoyed this Instructable and if you have any questions please feel free to leave me a comment bellow.

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Happy making!