Stone Arrowhead Hand-forged Bracelet

Hi everyone, in this Instructable i'd like to share with you how to hand-forge this stone arrowhead bracelet from scratch.

I got these arrowheads a while back and could never quite figure out what to do with them... In the end I think this turned out quite well.

Let's get going!...

• A stone arrowhead (this was bought from a craft store)
• Some 4mm and 2mm bronze stock
• A propane torch
• Silver solder
• Some leather gloves
• Pliers and a hammer
• A bucket of water

You will need to start by annealing your bronze to make it workable, if you do not do this first your metal will end up cracking this will render the piece unusable.

First things first...don your leather gloves as the metal you'll be working with will become extremely HOT!

Light your propane torch and start heating up your two bronze rods evenly to a dull red colour, once they are up to temperature you want to quench them quickly in your bucket of water. You will immediately notice that your metal is now much softer and easier to bend.

Now that your bronze is annealed you can move on the next step.

Now we start forging our bronze rods...

I used an old flat hammer head locked in a vice to hammer out my rods. The goal is to forge down your 4mm bronze rod to a ~2mm rectangle.

Hammer down the entire length of the rod then turn it on it's side and straighten it out, rinse and repeat until you have a mostly uniform rectangular rod.

The thinner 2mm rod you will just flatten down the one point to match up with your 4mm rod for soldering in the next step.

It's very important to anneal your bronze again as soon as you feel it start to harden again otherwise it will crack.

If you are feeling brave you can skip the quenching part and work your metal while it's hot, this will speed up the process considerably but you will need to be very careful as touching the metal barehanded will lead to some nasty burns. ALWAYS WEAR YOUR LEATHER GLOVES

Now it's time to solder everything together...

I created a small slit in the 4mm rod with a Dremel equipped with an abrasive disk that the 2mm rod can slide into, this is just to increase the surface area the solder has to grip on.

I also cut off 2x 15mm pieces from the 4mm rod that will be soldered on the other end to make our arrows fletching.

To use the silver solder you need to apply the flux to your work piece and add a piece of silver solder on top of the joint. Start heating up your joint with the propane torch until the solder flows into all of the gaps. Don't worry if its not perfect the first time you can always add more flux and reflow it.

Once you are done soldering you can let it cool off before we move on to the next step.

Now that it is starting to look like a bracelet we can start finishing it off.

First I used a metal chisel to make some cuts in the "fletching", you can also just make some indents just to give it some texture.

Next you can take some sanding paper to smooth out any rough edges that might be left on the piece. I start at 400 grit to get rid of most of the burrs then move on to 1000+ grit to prep it for polishing.

Once you are happy with the surface you can take a soft cloth with some metal polish and just buff the entire piece to get a nice shiny finish.

And we're almost done!

Now we just need to attach our stone arrowhead.

For a great Instructable on how to create your own arrowhead out of stone check out this one from user Think_Design_Build - Making arrowhead

I used a tiny drop of CA glue under the stone arrowhead just to hold it in place while you wrap the 2mm rod around it with the help of some pliers.

Cut off any excess rod and gently hammer the rod so that the arrowhead fits nice and snug.

Now you can bend your bracelet to the size you want, this is made easier by using a round object roughly the size of your wrist.

I decided to also stamp the inside of the bracelet with a punch set to make it a bit more personalised.

And that's it, your stone arrowhead bracelet is all done. I would appreciate it if you share your creations with me!

Happy making.