Thanks for your continued support~ (and yes, Thai design has some really awesome elements to it, reaching back many centuries at minimum.)

An excellent point and the question is an important one. As I see it, if we are talking about a design that has been made before and the lego-jewelry approach is possible, it can be a good way to go. My point with hand made is that it allows something new and different to happen. I'm not trying to make the same design as before, but in a more expensive way. That would be boring for me, and not good value for my client. In this situation, we saw the Te Amo ring, which in the old ring was the pierced letters and a simple spilt shank to hold the letters onto the ring. With hand made, I get to create a 1) knife-shank 2)bypass ring, and add a different 3)type-face (font) to the letters of "Te Amo" as well as the 4) filigree structural support instead of the split shank (Y shape) and then bead-set the 5) accent rubies. The point of hand made is that there is extra personality that you can pour into a design, so its no longer the same object. Starting with casting components can be both fast and good, but where do you want to go from there? There are some changes and choices you can make, but you are limited. With handmade, you can do almost anything you want. So the final question was "how much more added cost is fair". If we are making the same design that exists in a casting in hand-made and its the same quality... that is a difficult question. If I make something truly and measurably different however, then its a separate negotiation with the client, isn't it?

I'm glad you enjoyed the rings and the story, and thank you for your continued support. Your observations are quite acute and I believe correct. For the aside that you asked about, that is particularly acute. When presenting, its easy to adopt a persona and what i'm looking to do is show the viewers of both channels that i'm more than a cartoon. Both personas are a part of me, and genuine, but they're different ways of seeing me. Life is both complex and rich. Thanks for observing, as well as watching 🙏

Cheers to crafts~!

Lots of cool tech, and each with a different effect~

The game is the fun isn't it? being on the way to the goal is perhaps what we're looking for.

Thank you ~

Thank you, Justin. I appreciate that especially from a fellow fiend of learning 🙏

@@GemologyforSchmucks yah, what that one said.

I agree with this~

Thank you for your kind words. There is indeed so much to learn. I suppose one of our major challenges is to decide what we want to learn enough to keep learning in a similar trajectory. I struggle with that part XD. I'm glad to find that engraving and stone setting give me the warm fuzzies when I finish a project, so i'll keep working on those... and some others... HAH!

Thank you!~ there is a lot that goes into getting to this point, but I still have much to improve. The amount I had to polish this ring definitely changed the outcome, but we improve with every step we take when our eyes are open. Cheers~

Thanks ~ i'm also still rocking the 2012 vocab #makevintagegreatagain

My (loose) understanding is that it functions almost like reverse electroplating, but acts on the compound of the patina. Ferrous metals I know much less about.

Congratulations on your sale! I'll keep an eye out for your email.

Thanks for your patience~ gearing up for the next stage

That's what it's all about, as I see it.. We're in a world full of stuff, but it's the stories that make the whole game worth playing.

@@NoteandCompass Absolutely agree 🙌 And since we are here experiencing this lifetime, we need to look at the story we are creating for ourselves... and our Legacy... and how it affects those around us. Fortunately, things hold energy of those who created it... which is why food tastes better when made with love... and why art touches our soul and we just "have" to have it.

I appreciate your support ~ and there is more coming soon.

Thank you so much.

Quite a delightful surprise, eh?

Thanks very much~

Thanks for your continued support ~ there's more stories and jewels coming soon.

Excellent !~ lemme know how it goes.

Vinegar will likely brighten your jewelry, but it functions differently than this approach (and is much slower). Give it a try though, and let me know what happens.

Thanks ~ I've used it so many times, that I figure it was about time to publish it for everyone's use.

That's one of them fine Chinese machines that everyone loves to bash, but actually is quality, and competitively priced. Perhaps you could speak more with Lucy Walker, because she's trail-blazed through all the nonsense to find the best ones. I'm sure she might even have an email address or a website link for you #bestoflucktoyou PS. Miss you heaps too. PSS Just WAIT till I finish this batch and come back to Malaysia for more mysteries.

yep - and they can also degrade fine details like engraving faster.

Thanks for your kind words ~ and yes, tarnish/ natural patina has its place for sure. If you want to renew patina, a boiled egg (still hot) in a closed container can do that for you. I'll likely be doing another video on that process in the coming weeks. As to the wire, I purchased the wire stock, and I can pull it down with my draw plate when necessary.

@NoteandCompass I'm can't wait to see that video with the boiled egg! I did wear the black sterling picture ball...it got tarnish on my top. I wasn't happy, I did use a tarnish cloth on it. The black is really stuck to it, I might have to use your method to get that black tarnish off. Thank you for doing these videos, I missed you while you were gone 💞

@@sherri2594 Thank you, and hopefully the egg trick video will come to your aid sooner. May you be blessed in the time between~

My pleasure Zarich~ cheers.

Thank you Coleen~ My pleasure to share what has been shared so freely with me. It would be a shame for the world to forget what those before us had to do to make cool objects, particularly in this age when folk think that CAD can do everything, and better.

Thanks Sherri ~ i'm also quite partial to those rubies and 18K yellow. The 18K pink gold has definitely grown on me though... impossible to decide which I prefer.

The possibilities are effectively endless.

Absolutely - making the original master took ages. I may revisit the project in the future when I get to platinum fabrication... lets see

Thanks ~ best of luck in your quest!