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Barbara Kay Jewelry News

My August shows are coming up quickly! I hope I'll see some of you at one of them. Here are the dates and links to the events:

August 3, 4 and 5: Vancouver Arts and Music Festival
This should be a really fun event for the whole family. Check out the website to see schedules of the music and other fun things that will be happening during these three days. And best of all - I will be set up in the middle of things!

August 10: Washougal Art and Music Festival​
This should also be a really fun event, which celebrates both art and music. I'll be one of about 25 artists set up in the beautiful riverside town of Washougal.

Stone of the Month: Fire Agate

This month we are going to explore a specific type of agate that is not so easy to find as most: the fire agate.

At a quick glance, a fire agate looks like a plain brown agate. Boring, right? No! Move it a little; get the light shining on it and you will see bubbles of orange, red, green and gold fire under the surface. It’s like a little secret world underneath. So how did that happen?

Fire agate is made of two different minerals: chalcedony (agate) and iron oxide. The chalcedony began its life as much as 24-36 million years ago when violent volcanic eruptions spewed lava. As the lava hardened, it formed pockets, some of which were filled with silica rich groundwater. This silica slowly formed into layers of chalcedony. The unique combination of materials and temperatures caused these layers to happen in bubble like formations, which in geology is called a botryoidal formation. In between some of the chalcedony layers, very thin layers of iron oxide formed, which were then covered by more chalcedony. When light shines through the chalcedony, it gets reflected and diffracted by the thin layers of metallic material and sends out shimmers of color. This shimmer is called the “Schiller Effect.”

The most common colors seen in fire agates are shades of orange-brown, but you can also see a large variety of greens, yellows, reds and oranges – and occasionally blues and purples. The color is mostly determined by the thickness of the iron oxide layer. Thinner layers create the lighter shades of orange and red, while thicker layers create the deeper colors. Angle of light also affects the intensity and “movement” of color. This is one reason I love using these fascinating stones in rings. Since the hand moves a lot, you really get all of the wonderful effect of the fire inside the stone. Fire agates are also quite hard, so they are a natural stone for rings.

Fire agates are relatively rare. They can be found in only a few places, where conditions millions of years ago was just right: Arizona, California, New Mexico and northern Mexico.

I am not a lapidary artist, but apparently fire agates are rather challenging to cut. If you don’t grind enough of the chalcedony layer away, the fire inside is dull and muted. If you grind too much and cut into the iron oxide, the fire is lost. And, while the stone is fairly hard, it can crack if overheated by too much grinding. As a general rule, cabochons are ground so they have a smooth, flat surface. Fire agate cabochons that are cut and ground with a smooth surface allows for some of the fire to be really bright, but bubbles that are deeper below the surface tend to be muted. In the top picture of this article, you can see the largest cabochon has an area where the fire and botryoidal bubbles aren't really visible and are likely deeper below the surface.

The most beautiful – and of course, most expensive – fire agate cabochons are cut and ground around the botryoidal bubbles rather than having a smooth surface. This allows all of the fire to show brightly. This is, of course, a more challenging job for the lapidary artist! At this point in time, my fire agate cabochons all have a smooth surface; even so, they are beautiful!

Enjoy two of my newest rings, created with a couple of lovely fire agates. I will have them displayed at my August shows; after that, if they have not sold, they will be listed in my shop.

Let's Talk Metal!

A love of rocks was what brought me into jewelry making, but metalsmithing has given me an equal love for metal and the amazing things that can be done with it. I thought I’d share a little introduction into some properties of the metals you might see in the jewelry I make.

The metals I use most are silver, copper and – if I can find it – bronze. I do occasionally use brass and gold for decorative components. I love mixing metals; most of my pendants include more than just silver and stone, although the primary metal is usually sterling silver.

Pure (also called fine) silver is an element, as is copper and also 24 karat or pure gold. They are mined and then refined to remove impurities, but have nothing else done to them, and have no other minerals mixed in with them.

Sterling silver, bronze, brass and gold in karats less than 24 are all copper alloys; copper is mixed in with the pure element to create a different metal. It's really interesting how basic properties get changed when you mix copper with other metals; those changes affect how I work with each of them.

Copper is a pretty soft metal. It is easy to manipulate, bend and shape. All of the metals combined with copper to make alloys are also soft: fine silver to make sterling silver; tin to make bronze; zinc to make brass; a combination of gold and silver to make 22 and below karat gold. And yet, somehow, when the soft metals are combined, the resulting alloy is a much harder metal.

This explains why discovering how to create the alloy bronze around 3300 BC was so important that the period following that discovery was called the Bronze Age. Bronze weapons and tools were so much harder and stronger than anything that had been made before.

Sterling silver and lower karat gold – as well as brass and bronze - are all much harder than their original elemental parts. Knowing this helps me decide what to use where. For example, I generally use sterling silver for the back part of pendants, since it is harder and less likely to bend or warp than fine silver. I like to use fine silver for decorative elements that are soldered onto the sterling. One of the downsides of copper is that it tarnishes fairly quickly; copper in an alloy makes that alloy tarnish as well. Fine silver will stay bright quite a bit longer than sterling silver, which is a nice feature for the top layers in a decorative piece. An added bonus is that fine silver is easier to bend and curve, which helped with this pendant.

I also love using mixed metals; I love the contrast of silver with bronze or copper. Many of the shapes I use as decorative layers are small and quite detailed. So which metal to choose? Color of course is slightly different, and sometimes I’ll use a combination of copper and bronze – or even choose brass for its more yellow color. Other than color, brass is very similar to bronze in terms of metalsmithing.

Beyond color, I also think of the shape, and what I plan to do with those shapes. It is easy to saw through copper, but it is more difficult to get really sharp detailed cuts because of its softness; bronze allows for those details but I also break more blades when cutting bronze. I’ve generally preferred using bronze for detailed decorative elements (and occasionally for the back part of some pendants due to its hardness and warm earthy color). Sadly, bronze sheet has become very difficult to locate – and expensive, so I’ve turned to using copper more often.

Sometimes I want my details to be formed and more three dimensional, such as in the Pietersite pendant above.

I wanted the butterfly wings on this sagenite pendant to be slightly curved to hopefully give the appearance of movement. Bronze or brass would be somewhat difficult to do this with, so copper was my choice.

A place where the difference in hardness is really obvious is in making bezels – the thin metal that goes around a stone and holds it in place on your jewelry. I generally use fine silver for bezels. It is strong enough to hold the stone, but is soft enough to easily push against and sometimes over the stone without crinkling and getting too marked up. Sterling silver is very difficult to push like this and doesn’t always give a nice smooth surface after working on it.

And the first time I tried a 14 karat bezel – for this pendant - I was amazed at how hard and springy it was. The little bit of 18 karat gold I had worked with in the past was soft and easy to manipulate, so I was totally not expecting the challenge I had with the 14 karat. I will also say that the gold leaves were quite difficult to form as well.

The more copper in the alloy, the harder the alloy is - which continues to amaze me, given how soft copper is by itself.

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Another interesting thing that changes when copper is combined with another element is melting point. Copper has a pretty high melting point (1983⁰F). Fine silver also has a fairly high melting point (1761⁰F). But when you mix the two together, somehow the melting point of sterling silver is lower than both copper and fine silver (1640⁰F). This same thing happens with all of the copper alloys. I find this to be fascinating. It also of course affects how I use my torch when I’m soldering the different metals. I particularly noticed this, again, with 14K gold. I used my torch as I had used it (effectively) with 18K gold, and immediately melted my first bezel. That was a rather expensive lesson!

I love working with a variety of metals, and I love discovering new ways of using them alone and together. I hope you enjoyed a little bit of this discovery. I could go on and on about the subject, but this is probably a good place to stop… for now. Maybe I’ll return to metals in a future newsletter.

Thank you to the following sites for information on Fire Agates:

​https://www.rockngem.com/fire-agate-color-explained/​

​https://www.geologypage.com/2020/01/fire-agate.html​

​https://www.geologyin.com/2019/06/what-is-fire-agate.html​

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I would love to hear from you. Let me know what you think, and what you’d like to see in future newsletters. What stones would you like me to feature in the future? Do you have any questions about how I make a particular type of jewelry?