Silver & Iron Woven Bracelet

Made by Cityboy Forge July 26-29, 2011

The 1x3 mm sterling silver strips contrast nicely with the strip of iron that's been forged, rolled and trimmed.

Radically reducing the thickness of iron will inevitably result in some splitting and de lamination. (For lack of a better term.) The piece that is prepped for this project is therefore much larger than necessary to allow for this waste to be trimmed.

Double click for a 5 second video of the slicing process. I used a cold chisel with one straight side and one bevel. The iron is clamped under a large piece of O-1 being used as a straight edge. The center clamp is used to help keep the iron strip from moving around while it's being cut. (The video doesn't show much, I mainly wanted to see if I could imbed it into the page.)

The rough slices of iron. The uppermost strip of iron shows some minor de lamination, but it's not enough to worry about.

Testing the crimping die that I made for this bracelet. The strips need to be crimped to weave well, and since the iron is too brittle to crimp, the silver has to compensate for the iron strips being straight. The look of the iron strips is scrutinized to give the best appearance in the finished bracelet. A little like matching the grain on a wooden panel.

Testing the central strips and adding the outside silver strips. All is well and ready to assemble the whole bracelet.

After it's all together.

This view show the iron texture well so this is the side that will be the outside of the bracelet.

Soldered on some square wire for the ends of the bracelet. Polished and cleaned it while it was flat and signed it with a name and date. Afterwards it's bent into shape over the horn of the anvil with a light leather mallet.

Client is happy and I like the way it turned out too. There will be a few of these made for the holidays I'm guessing.

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