Easy Shell Mount

Easy Shell Pendant Mount

   Below is quick slide show/video of some of the steps involved in making a pendant  intended to hold a shell. It's a pretty easy project with no real soldering, except I usually like to solder the jump rings shut. It just looks better and it's seems more secure.  But for that you could use a low temp solder, if need be.   The banjo music is me finger picking a quick, abbreviated  version of Beethoven's 9th.  The photos and text below  the vid should give a little more details as to constructing the pendant. But I just wanted to play some banjo and try this new software out.

__________________________________

______________________________________

   This is the shell I started out with.  I picked it up at the beach when Liz and I went to Massachusetts to visit our niece, Abby. 

_________________________________

   This is a drawing/tracing of  the shell.  I just traced the shell on paper and added the little protrusions/prongs with the idea that they would eventually be bent up to hold the shell.  You could make them any shape. 

_____________________________________

   I used rubber cement to glue the paper down to the metal.  You can see the metal has been used before, but it certainly had more than enough room to make some more pieces.  You can't see it but I've also glued paper down on the other side.  It just keeps it from getting scratched.

_____________________________________

                                       At the bench, sawing.

____________________________________

The piece sawed out.

_____________________________________

   The metal and the shell side by side and then the shell on top.  The drawing is still glued down and at this point I'm just sizing it up and deciding how much needs to be filed down to get it to fit right.

_______________________________________

Drilling a hole for the  eventual jump ring.

_____________________________________

   The finished piece in some serious need to be shaped, sanded, and filed. 

______________________________________

More pictures of fitting the shell to the metal.

______________________________________

   This is difficult to see, but what I'm doing is filing a shallow grove into/across the little prongs.  If you remove a bit of metal(don't file too far!) it make the bending up of the prongs to hold the shell a little bit easier.  I filed each of the 5 prongs in this way.

_______________________________

   Here I'm using a prong pusher and a pair of smooth pliers to coax the prongs up around the shell to hold the shell to the backing.  You need to be careful here so you don't crack or chip the piece your trying to mount.
   I  buffed the piece with bobbing compound and then zam to a high shine before I fit the shell.  Then I touched up the prongs with some more buffing after I bent and pushed them into place. 

___________________________________

A couple of shots of the finished piece.

____________________________________

   During the making of this piece I cracked one of the shells by dropping it. I'm sure I said something I would not be proud of.  If your setting something somewhat delicate into a open mount it's sometimes not a bad idea to epoxy/fiberglass the inside of the piece, if you not going to see it. Then, if it does break, your not as likely to see pieces scatter all over the floor,plus from a user/wearabilty standpoint strength without an aesthetic backlash can only be a good thing.

________________________________________

   The above You Tube post is is pretty much a duplicate of the one at the beginning.  I just wanted to try posting both to see if there was much difference in the results and the process of embedding the html code. There was really no difference in pasting in the html other than adjusting the width through the html, which is really pretty easy.