Work in Process...

I am in one of those stages right now where there are a ton of things on the work bench and nothing seems to be getting done.  Sooooo.. I thought I would share one of my oldest and most treasured projects that I have sporadically been picking up and putting down for a little over a year. Hey, I even blogged about it way back in September of last year and you can click here to see a photo of the inspiration of my work and learn more.

Here is a fine silver tube bead made from precious metal clay in the final stages of cleaning and polishing. I like the semi-rough texture of the silver and believe that I will keep it this way.  At this point, the silver is clean and bright as can be though I will eventually darken it with a patina of liver of sulfur.

Now for the polishing part, the sides are still pretty rough. I am smoothing things out with a small half domed file and then will move on to successively finer grades of sanding. At this point the only part that is slowing me down is finding small enough polishing tools, from what I have on hand, to fit my flexible shaft buffer for inside the bead.  Or maybe I will just try making small sanding sticks... its got to be smooth and finished looking inside.  Even if nobody can see it, the inside - I will know.

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If all goes well, I will string the bead on a rope of glass seed beads or possibly thick leather to make a short 16 inch necklace.