I made 3 new rings!
At the first weekend of Great Lakes Medieval Faire, I made 3 new pewter rings.
REN FAIRE
7/16/20262 min read
This past weekend, I started working in the Valkyre Pewter booth at Great Lakes Medieval Faire. This is the 3rd year I've working in this booth, making and selling pewter jewelry and statuary.
Last year, a friend of Brian Carnes gave him his old tig welder. It uses a tungsten needle, argon gas, and an electric spark to micro-weld metals together. It was thought that we could use it to weld pewter, and we did some experimenting with it.
This past Sunday, I got it setup to use. Because it creates an electric arc, we were worried about it tripping the circuit at the faire site. So, we ran the power through my knockoff-Jackery battery pack to act as a filter, and it seemed to work just fine.
My first experiment was this owl charm. The loop, or lug, didn't come out when it was cast, so I wasn't able to hang it on a chain or ribbon. Instead, I tried welding it to a blank ring. And it worked! I was able to tack around the owl and attach it to the ring cleanly.
I was very happy with how it turned out, and I showed Brian. He thought it looked good too, and told me to put it out in the ring case for sale. At the time, there was a family group looking at the rings, so I put it out and told them that it was a one-of-a-kind ring that I had just finished. AND THEY BOUGHT IT! The ring fit the dad in the group well enough, so the transaction was made. It was only after they left that I realized I hadn't even gotten a picture of the ring before it was sold. The picture above is from the second one I made last that day.
Later on, I did some experimenting with using the tig welder to tack a cut ring closed (like for sizing down a ring), and then finishing it up with a traditional torch. That seemed to work pretty well, and it was much faster than just using the torch, so I'll probably be doing that going forward.
By the end of the day, I had made 3 new rings: another owl ring, a dove/seagull ring, and a jack-o-lantern eye ring. All three rings are currently for sale at the Valkyre Pewter booth at GLMF. Or, if you can't make it to the Faire, reach out to Valkyre Pewter on Facebook and ask about this post. But, if you do stop by the booth, please say "hi!"