The Story of a Pendant

There was a man and woman. Woman said to man "How do I look?" and as every man knows to reply, he said "Beautiful." But woman was not sure, and thus man went on a quest to make sure that woman felt beautiful.

But man did not want to give woman something ordinary. He wanted to give woman something special. There was nothing for it but to make something.

<quick disclaimer: this story is fictional. It is mainly the result of me not taking enough photos - and a desire to practice sketching>

But man did not know what to do. He had to come up with an idea. Over several weeks he filled up a notepad with sketches. He picked one he liked, and sketched it lots of times. He tried a few variations on a similar shape to see what they looked like.

Because man did not have many tools, he decided it had to be made from simple, bold shapes. He also wanted it to be made from materials he had on-hand - wood and metal

<In this case the notepad was several years ago - though the final development was recent (and digital) it is the fourth picture above>

Man carefully copied his design onto a piece of paper, folded it in half, cut it out, and drew around it on to a thin piece of wood. He found a coping saw and cut around the shape.

He then sanded the outsides rounded - as he had seen in his minds-eye when he came up with the concept.

<If you need symmetry and don't have access to a printer, use a piece of paper and fold in in half. The wood used was mahogany>

Man found a piece of 1.5mm metal sheet, and scratched around a washer. He then drilled through the middle, with the drill spinning very fast, and drilling very slowly - to try stop the metal from triangulating. He then used a pair of snips to cut around the outside. The snips left it bent, so he carefully hammered it back to being flat. He finished it off with sandpaper, bringing it to a shine.

<To try get it round, I tried mounting it in a drill on a bolt and spinning it - but this didn't work very well - so it was made round by hand>

Now man had a problem. He wanted to pit the metal disc inside the wooden sheath, but in such a way that it couldn't come back out. He devised an ingenious plan. He snapped the wooden sheath at the point. Then he used a rotary tool to hollow out an area for the metal disc - being careful to not disturb the cracked part so that it would fit back together perfectly.

He then used some glue on the joint - being careful not to let any excess get onto the outside of the wood.

<If the cutoff disc's diameter is larger than the metal disc, try find a more worn out blade - or just try cut a rock for a few seconds>

Now man finished the piece by polishing the wood with a little wax in a buffing wheel. A piece of leather was used for the cord.

He then gave it to woman - a one of a kind gift, made with his own hands.

The man gave the pendant to the women, and she knew that she had a man who valued her, who would spare her his time and attention.

Some Realities:

The hardest parts of any design are:

1. Figuring out what you're making
2. Figuring out how to make it.

Once you've done those, it's easy enough. Hopefully this instructable has shown you that one way to embed a piece of silver into a piece of wood is to break the fruit of your labour. The only specialist tool used in this project was the rotary tool - and I'm sure some ingenious person out there knows how to make small slots without one.

Hopefully this has also illustrated that a new design doesn't come up overnight. This design was initially sketched about a year before it was made. Over that time it made various appearances, but the oldest one I have is shown in the photo in this step (along with some other ones in the notebook)

Oh, and that's enough drawing for a couple weeks.