Have you ever been curious how to make jewelry? In this episode, Aisha Blake, Senior DevRel at New Relic and an organizer for Title of Conf and Self Conference, gives us a crash course on how to make silver jewelry. She discusses how she got started, the process for making rings, and her latest obsession of shiny rocks.
Matt Stauffer:
Hey, and welcome to Things Worth Learning. I'm your host, Matt Stauffer. And this is a show where a curious computer programmer, that's me, interviews fascinating people about their passions. If you're watching the YouTube, you'll notice that I'm handholding a mic because Aisha was gracious enough to sit through the whole process of me figuring out why the heck my normal mic was not working. So I'm just going to be sitting here like a DJ. If you're listening to the audio, you should go check out the YouTube to see how ridiculous I look. But anyway, my guest today is the gracious and wonderful Aisha Blake, Lead Developer Relations Engineer at New Relic, co-organizer at Self Conf and founder of Title of Conf. Aisha, would you mind telling, well, hi, would you mind telling the audience a little bit about yourself, whether it's your personal or your professional life?
Aisha Blake:
Yeah, absolutely. So hello.
Matt Stauffer:
Howdy.
Aisha Blake:
So I am a teacher sort of at the heart of what I do, whether that's being a software engineer or being in dev role, that's the motivation really in all of my jobs that I've ever had in tech. And it's funny because growing up, it felt like my entire family were all teachers and I was like, that is the one thing I know I don't want to do.
Matt Stauffer:
It turns out.
Aisha Blake:
That seems hard. I don't think so. And it just sort of wound up happening. And so whether I started literally as a teacher and writing curriculum for a bootcamp, so sort of throwing myself into languages I didn't know, and eventually landing on JavaScript, which I sort of knew, writing curriculum, teaching. And now as a developer relations engineer, I am learning as I teach. I feel like I teach less often, but I am learning more in public, which is just a lot of fun.
Matt Stauffer:
I love that.
Aisha Blake:
And so that gets sort of paired with my theater kid background. If you can see me, there are a bunch of Broadway posters behind me. You can see probably not all of them, but there are 10 behind me right now. These are like some of my favorites from my college years mostly. The wonky one is title, or I really want it to be Title of Show, which is what the conference is named after. But it is actually In the Heights.
Matt Stauffer:
I love it. I see Once as well, but I don't know if I recognize any of the rest of them.
Aisha Blake:
Yeah, the one directly behind me, which I think is really funny, is Hair. It is hidden by my hair.
Matt Stauffer:
Which is appropriately, yep there you go. I love that.
Aisha Blake:
I was like, I know that most people will not understand that this is a little joke I've made for myself.
Matt Stauffer:
But I still get to chuckle every time. I love that. So you introduced a lot of things and I know that we're not actually talking about technology today, but I wanted to do one real quick thing. And I tell everybody who's going to be on the show, like I want this to be something where... I'm a technologist so I have a lot of friends who are, but not everybody is who is, but I want to make sure that programmers and technologists enjoy the show, but also our friends and family enjoy. I want to be able to share this with my mom and my cousins and all kind of stuff and for it to make sense. I think the topic today is going to make perfect sense for them. But I do want to say if someone's never heard of DevRel or developer relations, can you tell real quick, just like, what does a job as a developer relations engineer actually look like?
Aisha Blake:
Yeah, absolutely. So it's kind of a tough question to answer because it is so different depending on the company you're at.
Matt Stauffer:
That makes sense.
Aisha Blake:
But at its core, it is being a sort of bridge between developers who either don't know about your product, or maybe only use your product a little bit, or are active to the developers at your company who are building that product as well as other sort of stakeholders in the company. So we sort of represent other developers, but we're also out in communities and actively listening to other developers. My team specifically is very, very community focused. And so we do a lot of streaming on Twitch. We're just starting to think about getting into in person events again, which traditionally is a huge part of a lot of developer relations responsibilities, going to conferences and talking to people and figuring out what's important to them.
Matt Stauffer:
Yeah, I love that. And it's interesting because I would have imagined that the average definition of DevRel would be representing your company to the community, which I'm sure is a part of the responsibility. But the first thing you said was representing the community to the company, which I think is a really cool part of DevRels is like if you imagine in your industry, whoever you are listener, that there was someone whose job it was to represent like the big vendors that you work with, you might go, "Oh, they're in our space but we don't fully trust them." But DevRels are like all of our best friends. DevRels are like at every conference hanging out, sharing swag. They're like, "Oh yeah, I got my company to buy the swag for you all. Come get some free t-shirts. By the way, what are you working on? You want to pair on something together? I've been doing this cool thing. Oh you were having a problem with our tool? Oh I know the people who wrote that line of code and I'll get it fixed for you." They're just out kind of like being everybody's besties. So I love it.
Aisha Blake:
Yeah, I describe myself as a friendly internet person.
Matt Stauffer:
I like it. I mean, I've described you before as my internet friend to multiple people, so it makes sense. All right.
Aisha Blake:
Thank you.
Matt Stauffer:
Yeah, of course. So, okay, so let's move into the actual topic. So before we get to the topic you know, the first question I want to ask you is, do you have any sort of life mantra phrase or idea that you try to live your life by?
Aisha Blake:
Yes. And it comes from those days of teaching in the bootcamp actually. So the phrase that comes to mind is let's try it.
Matt Stauffer:
I love it. And if you're not watching your video, there was like a little bit of like the shrug emoji when she tried, just kind of like, let's just try it, just see what happens, right? What could hurt?
Aisha Blake:
Absolutely. It comes from getting questions like, "Well, what would happen if I did X, Y, Z? What would happen if I changed this variable or this input?" And my answer is always, "Well, let's try it. Nothing bad is going to happen if you test out your questions."
Matt Stauffer:
I love that. And one cool thing I think about that is the way you're wording it. You're giving the person who's asking agency to figure things out on their own, which I think is probably part of your methodology or your ideology as a teacher. Like as a teacher, you don't want to just answer their questions, right? You want to also be able to give them space to figure it out. And then I think it's probably also part of your ideology as a person. All right, so let's get the actual meat of the episode. So you know this podcast is about one topic that you are particularly passionate about. Can you tell me what we're going to talk about today?
Aisha Blake:
Yes, absolutely. We are going to be talking about making jewelry.
Matt Stauffer:
Yes. I love this. I don't traditionally wear a lot of jewelry and I've literally just started wearing a silver chain all the time. And I was like, "Wait a minute. We're talking about making silver jewelry right now. I'm very excited about this."
Aisha Blake:
That's so perfect.
Matt Stauffer:
I know. So I know literally nothing, absolutely nothing about this topic. So normally I could at least give you like an introductory prompt to get you going. I don't know. I got nothing. So where do we even start with this conversation?
Aisha Blake:
Yeah. Okay, well let's maybe start, we'll work into it the way I sort of work into-
Matt Stauffer:
Kind of your history maybe?
Aisha Blake:
Making jewelry, yeah. I imagine that there will be questions as there will be-
Matt Stauffer:
I'm confident, no concerns there.
Aisha Blake:
Yeah, okay.
Matt Stauffer:
So how'd you get into it?
Aisha Blake:
Yeah, I was at Michael's.
Matt Stauffer:
Okay, as one does.
Aisha Blake:
As one does, it was right before Christmas. I hadn't bought my sisters anything. What can I do? Generally I'll try to make things.
Matt Stauffer:
I was just going to say are you traditionally kind of like a crafty person or anything?
Aisha Blake:
Yeah. I'm like a crafty light person.
Matt Stauffer:
Yeah. You can go to Michael's but you don't maybe know every single aisle by memory quite yet.
Aisha Blake:
Right. And I'm often really disappointed with the quality of the things. So like as a child, I would go to Michael's and be like, "Oh, let me buy this toy for my baby cousin and like paint it." I'm like, this doesn't feel right. I didn't make this wooden train.
Matt Stauffer:
Right. I've done that for my children as an adult. So I feel you. I'm like, I didn't make this Gator. I literally just painted it green. He loves it, but I feel you, it's not the same level.
Aisha Blake:
Yeah. And so I was like, okay, well what could I do where I'm actually making something with my hands that someone might want? So I buy a bunch of wire, different sizes, just literally looking at the book and then figuring out, okay, what exactly do I need to get this thing done? That's my shopping list now. And then I go home. And I spent probably the next two weeks, three weeks, whatever break I had watching YouTube videos on making wire jewelry. And it is shocking how many different shapes you can get out of just wire? There's no heat. There are hardly any tools other than cutters and pliers of different shapes and it's just a lot of hands.
Matt Stauffer:
So your basic work, is that still the basic or is did you graduate on bigger and greater things? And I should, okay.
Aisha Blake:
So there's definitely a transition. So I really liked the wire thing because with it, and at the time I was going to a lot of conferences.
Matt Stauffer:
And you sit at booths a lot of time, where you can just kind of be, what are you going to do now?
Aisha Blake:
This is actually my first official developer relations role that I'm in right now.
Matt Stauffer:
Oh okay. I guess that's true. That makes sense. You were just going because you liked them.
Aisha Blake:
Yeah. I just really enjoyed speaking and that's where I met so many of my friends in the industry and I was like yeah. And I get to travel and I don't have to pay for it.
Matt Stauffer:
They pay for your travel. They pay for your hotel. Yeah.
Aisha Blake:
This is great. Yeah. And so sometimes I would bring the jewelry stuff along and so it wasn't super practical. But I got to a point where I was like, okay, well I want to start making more varied designs. I want to have more freedom, make sturdier things because there's only so much.
Matt Stauffer:
So one thing I wanted to ask before, I just realized, I did just ask you what did you go to next? But I want to have a better sense of what the initial kind of phases of making this jewelry. So I'm imagining like a spool of wire, like wire I would use in a construction project. You take a piece of the spool off, you snip it with your cutters and then you put things on it. I'm imagining, I don't know if there are like beads or colored wires that you're wrapping on stuff like that or stuff that hangs from it. And then in the end there's like a, it's twisted around maybe like a loop that goes into your earring. Is that kind of your earring into your ear, I guess. Is that kind of what we're talking about? Or am I totally misunderstanding what you were doing at the beginning there?
Aisha Blake:
Yeah. So that's a couple of ways that you could go about making wire jewelry. But for me, a lot of it was being interested in wire weaving.
Matt Stauffer:
What?
Aisha Blake:
Yeah.
Matt Stauffer:
Okay. Tell me more about this.
Aisha Blake:
So I would, for example, make a bracelet that was woven from you have a base wire, which is like your thicker wire that's giving you the structure of whatever it is you're making. And maybe you have, I don't know, six base wires. And those are, say 14 gauge, which is kind of thick. The rings that I'm wearing, for example, they're wire rings on their 16 gauge, so a tiny bit smaller. Let's say that you have six, 14 gauge base wires and you're weaving those together with a much smaller wire, say 20 gauge.
Matt Stauffer:
So when you say you're weaving together, are those six all not woven? They're just basically six that are straight and then you're using the smaller weave between them?
Aisha Blake:
Exactly, yes. And they might not be straight. They might be in different shapes that you might bend them at a certain point to give yourself a place to lay a stone or something like that. But yeah, I got really into weaving different patterns into the wire and I could make different shapes that way as well. So I had these herring bone earrings that I made that look, they cradle, they each cradle a singular bead or a round bead. And I made bracelets. I made links for bracelets that almost match those earrings. And so you get a little set going. Those are probably my favorite woven pieces.
Matt Stauffer:
So when you were making these pieces at this point, are these primarily for you, gifts for friends or were you already starting to sell them in certain places? What were you doing when you made the stuff?
Aisha Blake:
Yeah. All of the above. There was definitely a moment where I was like, "You know what? This tech stuff is too much for me. Maybe I'll just be a jeweler now."
Matt Stauffer:
I love it. I mean, we all have those moments, like I think I want to just go herd sheep and never see a computer again for the rest of my life.
Aisha Blake:
That was definitely my sheep herding moment.
Matt Stauffer:
I love it.
Aisha Blake:
I went to, I took some time off. I finished working at the bootcamp. I did a contract. I had a couple contracts that I finished the year out with. And then I just do a maker space every day for a while. And I was like learning machining, like computer assisted machining. And I was getting into different kinds of jewelry, a little bit of 3D modeling here.
Matt Stauffer:
That's some serious stuff, man. You're really ramping it up. And was that immediately post doing the silver stuff like the way you told me? Because I don't actually know what the phases of your journey are. So was this phase two or was there something before this?
Aisha Blake:
So the machining and everything was kind of phase two. I was like, ah, what could I make with a computer and then craft with this machine? And everything that I wanted to make took so long, just like days on this CNC mill. And I was like, this is not sustainable.
Matt Stauffer:
And when you say it takes so long, I assume it's not just that it probably took you a while to plan it, but it was mainly that the mill would just be milling for days straight, right?
Aisha Blake:
Yes, exactly. And it was a shared mill. I don't own a CNC mill. That's incredibly expensive, like house expensive.
Matt Stauffer:
Wow, okay.
Aisha Blake:
Yes, at least the one I was using.
Matt Stauffer:
This is not like a home studio situation.
Aisha Blake:
No.
Matt Stauffer:
Okay, good to know.
Aisha Blake:
This was not something that I could have afforded myself. And so I was like, I can't be in this shared space taking up this massive machine for this tiny pay for multiple days. It's just not a thing. And so I was like, okay, well what other types of techniques I start using to get the shapes that I want? Because I'm imagining like also really into board games, I want to make pendants or earrings that are in the shape of some of the pieces that I like. And so that got me into like, okay, let me learn about casting, different types of casting.
Aisha Blake:
Yeah. It's a whole, it's such a range of techniques. And there are still jewelry, lots of jewelry techniques I haven't even tried, but casting really drew me because there's so much freedom in what you can make and so many different ways that you can do it that are more or less accessible. So the first thing that I tried is sand casting. So you can get a little kit. I believe it's called Delft sand casting kit. And it's sort of, it's a sort of clay sand. It's very, very fine. And so you can get a lot of detail. It comes with a little cup that you tamp the sand down into. And you then need a, it's called a master. Okay. So that could be as long as it's hard enough that it's not going to be damaged as you're mashing sand down on top of it, then you're good as long as you can get a good impression, and then you want to dig holes for yourself. So you need one large hole to pour molten metal into. But you also need smaller holes for air to escape.
Matt Stauffer:
Oh, right, right, right.
Aisha Blake:
And that's true of basically any kind of casting, right? Like you're pouring something hot and liquid inside and you need somewhere for the air that's already there to escape. So this is meant for smaller pieces and it's great for jewelry because most of the pieces that you cast are going to be pretty small. And so we're getting a little bit to my home studio here, because I went through a couple of maker spaces and eventually we hit the pandemic, had to rebuild.
Matt Stauffer:
Yep, as we all have done in so many ways. Can I ask you a little bit more about the casting before you go forward?
Aisha Blake:
Absolutely.
Matt Stauffer:
So you were telling me about the thing where you're pouring the stuff in the sand. So I had imagined that when you were pouring stuff in the sand, there was like a sand and you were kind of like poking at it with little implements, but it seems more like, did you make the thing you wanted to cast out of clay or something? And that was what you're pressing the sand against?
Aisha Blake:
Yes.
Matt Stauffer:
How'd you make the shape?
Aisha Blake:
Yes. So whenever you're casting something, you start off, you can do it a couple different ways. You can carve out a shape, whatever shape you want. That's I guess you probably could do that with sand, but it's easier definitely. And the intended processes that you already have that shape, whether that be something that already exists, like I don't know, I could cast this pencil if I wanted to.
Matt Stauffer:
Take a little figurine or something, sure, right, right.
Aisha Blake:
Sure. Or if you already have a piece of jewelry that you want to replicate, you can use that. And so you would put it down into the sand and it's easier if it's got, for this particular method, actually it doesn't really matter if the one side is flat, but you want it to be a shape that you can get the liquid down into.
Matt Stauffer:
Oh right. You don't want too many small little nooks and crannies or whatever else.
Aisha Blake:
Right, because that's going to be much, much harder for the liquid to get into. And so you'll end up with a partial cast. And so once you have that, whether you've made it or you found it or whatever, you pack in your first layer, say you shove your master into it.
Matt Stauffer:
Like halfway?
Aisha Blake:
Halfway. And then you pack in a lot more sand, as much sand as you can get in there. The tighter that sand is packed, the better the impression you're going to get. You pack it down, you pack it down, you pack it down. You do it in layers, you tamp it down, more layers. And then you remove the master and you should be left with a pretty hard impression of that thing. And that's when you put out the holes, so you have one, like I said, that you pour the metal into, and then you also have little flues for the air to escape out of at sort of different angles. And that's true of whatever type of casting. So we're talking about sand casting, but you could also use cuttlefish. That's like another sort of rough.
Matt Stauffer:
I assume there's no actual cuttlefish involved in this.
Aisha Blake:
Oh no, it's actual cuttlefish. The bone is really soft. It sounds kind of gruesome when you describe it that way.
Matt Stauffer:
It's a little bit.
Aisha Blake:
Yeah, you cut the cuttlefish in half and then you just, you carve out whatever you're wanting to make that impression of. Then you bind it back up with binding wire, which is just like, I think it's iron, I'm not sure actually, steel wire.
Matt Stauffer:
Metal of some sort.
Aisha Blake:
Some sort of metal with a much higher boiling point. And then in the same way, you also need those little offshoots and a big enough hole at the top to pour your metal and down into, and there you go.
Matt Stauffer:
Okay. So when you're casting, what were you pouring in? What was the metal that you're pouring in?
Aisha Blake:
Most of the time it's silver for me, but you can do it with whatever kind of metal. It's pretty common for people who are getting into it as like a crafting thing to do pewter or to do brass.
Matt Stauffer:
Okay. Are they cheaper and easier to work with?
Aisha Blake:
They're cheaper, and especially with pewter, the melting point is lower.
Matt Stauffer:
Got it. So you don't need quite as much fancy stuff and you're not as likely to harm yourself doing it.
Aisha Blake:
Probably just as likely to harm yourself really, but-
Matt Stauffer:
But less fancy stuff at least.
Aisha Blake:
Less fancy stuff, yeah.
Matt Stauffer:
Okay, all right. So at this point, you had started phase one was making primarily wire drilling. You were talking about weaving stuff like that. Phase two was you went into the maker spaces and you're doing all the CNC milling. Phase three was all this casting?
Aisha Blake:
Yeah, so phase three is getting into the actual silversmithing. So I went to a different maker space and this is where I learned most of my soldering skills and all of that. And I'm getting more into studio jewelry or fine jewelry in a couple of rare cases. So the studio jewelry is kind of my comfort zone at the moment.
Matt Stauffer:
So I don't know what those lines are. Can you tell me what is whatever you're doing before versus studio versus fine? How do you delineate them?
Aisha Blake:
I mean I would categorize most of what I have done as studio jewelry, and that's sort of like a step below fine jewelry. Fine jewelry implies that you're working with precious metals, precious stones. So like a piece of gold jewelry with a sapphire or something like that. It's essentially you're working with more expensive materials.
Matt Stauffer:
Right. Does it necessarily imply a level of talent in terms of working so it's less crude or is it like, it doesn't matter how good you are as long as it's fancy stuff, it's fine jewelry or is it not fully defined?
Aisha Blake:
To my knowledge, it's not fully defined. I could be wrong. I'm not actually a jeweler.
Matt Stauffer:
Sure. I'm not expecting you to be an expert here, just to your level of knowledge, you know?
Aisha Blake:
Yeah. I could be wrong, but my impression is essentially the cost of materials.
Matt Stauffer:
Okay, that makes sense.
Aisha Blake:
I feel like if you're working in gold, it's just so expensive that no matter what the actual end product looks like, and this is me not being an arch-y person, but no matter what, I feel like it is treated as arch unless you're talking about like mass produced, the little gold balls or whatever that you get from Wal Mart. Any sort of handmade gold jewelry is necessarily going to be fine jewelry.
Matt Stauffer:
Okay. So I interrupted you and you're in the middle of telling me that at this point you had started doing some studio and occasionally fine jewelry. And now you're about to say more, but I just stopped you. So kind of this we're talking phase three now, you are learning about silversmithing. You talk about soldering. Can you tell me, what kind of other stuff are you doing? Because at this point I still don't understand how you're putting these pieces together other than the things you specifically have told me.
Aisha Blake:
Yeah. So let's break down a ring. How about that?
Matt Stauffer:
Okay, yeah, let's do it.
Aisha Blake:
I actually wear the first ring that I ever made all the time.
Matt Stauffer:
That's awesome. YouTube, everyone check the YouTube and you can see it.
Aisha Blake:
Yeah.
Matt Stauffer:
I love it.
Aisha Blake:
So there is split double shank, and the shank of a ring is the part that goes around your finger. And then there is a bezel around a turquoise stone. So the way that we would make this ring would be to, you could start a couple different places, but for me, I would typically start by encasing, getting the measurements for the stone. So I would set this stone and then I might put it down for a while. I might not even pair it with a shank or anything else, I might not even know that I want to make it into a ring, but I'll have it ready to go.
Matt Stauffer:
And so when you say set it, if you were to take that ring that there and chop the finger shank part, you will literally have a stone. And for those who are not watching right now, a stone with a nice little, well shaped piece of silver around the stone, and you'll have done that before you even know exactly where that nice piece of silver with the stone is going.
Aisha Blake:
Yes.
Matt Stauffer:
Is that right?
Aisha Blake:
Often.
Matt Stauffer:
Cool. Yeah, not always, but yeah.
Aisha Blake:
Yeah. So in this case, I have a backing plate on the stone because I knew in this case that I was going to make a ring. So I have a backing plate on the stone. It's a thicker silver than the bezel that goes around the stone. So that backing plate is probably like 20 gauge silver sheet. I tend to go thinner because at the time, or I tended to go thinner because at the time, I really didn't have a lot of money to be just like buying silver.
Matt Stauffer:
Thinner means less money for silver, yeah.
Aisha Blake:
And so I would buy the thinnest silver I could get away with. And then I would place my stones so that was I wasting as little as possible, recycling the silver. So a jeweler's bench is built so that you can collect the metal shavings and dust, and then you melt that down, and you have-
Matt Stauffer:
And then you got more materials to work with.
Aisha Blake:
You got more silver, exactly. And so depending on the model that you get, you might have multiple drawers, multiple large, shallow drawers that you can use to collect different kinds of metal.
Matt Stauffer:
Got it. So that you're not collecting and then melting your silver and your pewter and your gold or whatever it is and it's just mush.
Aisha Blake:
Exactly, yeah.
Matt Stauffer:
Before you go further, can I ask you so what process, so again, I know everyone can't see it, but just imagine a stone of any shape that you might potentially put in something. And what she has right now is that there's a piece of silver that is wrapped around the outside edge and then a separate piece of silver originally that are now attached, that is flat behind the thing. So starting with just the bezel, you said, the thing that goes around the edge, how would you cut and form that? Like you said, you took the measurements, but then what? What do you do there?
Aisha Blake:
So the measurements are pretty rough, actually. I will, and I keep like putting my hand in front of my microphone.
Matt Stauffer:
That's fine. You sound good.
Aisha Blake:
I will take whatever the stone is. And I'll put it down on flat surface and I'll take my bezel wire and just physically wrap it around. And that will leave me with a little bit extra. So I cut my bezel wire, which usually is going to be very thin, fine silver. Whereas most of the silver I'm working with is sterling silver. Sterling silver is going to have slightly less silver in it. So if you've ever seen the like 0.95 or 925 on a piece of silver jewelry, that indicates that it's sterling and not fine silver.
Matt Stauffer:
Oh, okay. Does the sterling work better against like our hands or something like that or what's the benefit or is it just like, "Hey, it does the job and costs less money. So let's work with it."
Aisha Blake:
It does the job and it costs less money.
Matt Stauffer:
I love it.
Aisha Blake:
It's also harder. So the fine silver is going to be more pliable, easy to bend around.
Matt Stauffer:
Around a stone.
Aisha Blake:
The stone, exactly. And so, some people also use sterling silver for bezel wire, but it's pretty common to see fine silver used and you can finish it so that it looks the same. So this is fine silver around this particular stone. So I got as close as I could to the right size. And you want it to be, you want it to go all the way around pretty snugly, but you also want it to come just slightly above where the stone starts to dome. So this particular cut is called a cabochon. It's a flat unpolished back to the stone, and then it's cut into some shape. It could be round. It could be an oval. In this case, it's a triangle. And then the top is sort of domed. And so that gives you a really solid base to then bend that bezel wire over.
Matt Stauffer:
Put a lip over it basically.
Aisha Blake:
Mm-hmm (affirmative). And so there's nothing holding the stone in except that little tiny lip. But you don't get to that part until the very end, and that's because you don't want to damage the stone in all of the other operations, yeah.
Matt Stauffer:
You made this bezel wire around. Oh, so all the other operations, the stone's not actually in there.
Aisha Blake:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Matt Stauffer:
Got it. So you made the bezel wire, but then you also cut. I imagine you cut the sheet for the back that's exactly the same shape as the bezel wire. And now is that when you're soldering? How do you actually attach these two pieces together? Okay.
Aisha Blake:
Yeah, absolutely. So you get the sheet that's roughly the right size or you could do it on a whole plate, but then you're heating up a whole sheet of metal and that's more work than you need to be doing. And so, unless you're doing a lot at one time, I just cut it out first. So, and most people who are doing it as a hobby are not going to be like production jewelers just pumping them out. So I cut the backing sheet roughly. I will put my, I'll get my bezel wire the right size, and that involves soldering the bezel wire closed. So to do that, you are making sure that the edges line up as perfectly as you can possibly get them. I will literally hold it up to the light to see if there is a gap in between, like trying to get it as beautifully married as I can. And then you take a little piece of, little tiny piece of solder. Usually I use Chip Solder, but there's also paste and wire and a couple of things.
Matt Stauffer:
Wire's the only one I've ever seen. I will Google all this and put it in the show notes for the rest of you later. So we don't have to make, I won't make you tell us about all that. So you use Chip Solder.
Aisha Blake:
Yeah. And there are different hardnesses. So for a ring where you're going to be doing several different soldering operations, you start with harder solder because it's got a higher melting point. And so as you then-
Matt Stauffer:
So the other things, oh, cool. You're not melting the existing solder. That's very cool.
Aisha Blake:
Yeah. So I'll start with the bezel wire. I'll use hard solder and I'll get it to be the right shape. And if it gets bent out of shape, as long as I don't melt it as I'm soldering it together, then we're good. I'll use the stone to bend it back into whatever shape it's supposed to be. And then I'll set it on my backing plate. Then you're going to use medium solder to get the bezel wire onto the backing plate. And then you know you have the right shape already. You can cut the backing plate to be exactly the shape that you want.
Matt Stauffer:
Perfect, okay. So we now have a thing intended to hold the stone and you wouldn't have put this backing plate on in some circumstances, but because it's a ring you did, so now it's prepared for a ring. Now you said it's, I think you said it was a double separated or something like that shank. Is that right? Double something?
Aisha Blake:
Split double shank.
Matt Stauffer:
That's so similar. So tell me what that means.
Aisha Blake:
Yeah, I actually have, I don't have auto focus.
Matt Stauffer:
But I imagine there's two separate kind of shanks that are attached to each other. What's the split part?
Aisha Blake:
Yeah, there's a little space.
Matt Stauffer:
Oh, there's a little gap. But the gap's only there when it's attaching to the ring or attaching to the stone, right? There's no gap the rest of the way around otherwise.
Aisha Blake:
That's correct, yeah. So this was a single piece of wire. You can buy this. It's called a double half round wire. There's so many different kinds of wire. It's wild. And so you can buy it like this and I chose to cut a split into each end of the wire.
Matt Stauffer:
So that it can kind of-
Aisha Blake:
Yeah.
Matt Stauffer:
I'm trying to imagine how to say it to people who are not watching it. Imagine as if there's two pieces and you said it's a half round. So I assume that that means that the part facing away from your finger is round the part, hitting your fingers flat.
Aisha Blake:
Exactly, mm-hmm (affirmative).
Matt Stauffer:
So here, imagine like a long stretch of wire each, but it's two pieces of wire attached to each other and you cut off the bottom half of the wire. So the bottom half of the wire's flat and you got two freaking half circles. They're attached together. You cut them to the rough size of the ring, and then you cut in between each of the-
Aisha Blake:
Exactly.
Matt Stauffer:
So that when it got closer to the ring, it could kind of separate out and support the ring a little bit.
Aisha Blake:
Yeah, exactly. You got it. And that involves one of the most like fundamental and also the most important skills, which is saw work. So jeweler's saw is huge. It's so important. And you use it in so many different ways, so many different applications. I've seen people who make their whole living just sawing incredibly fine details into sheet metal, and then like layering it. And it can be so beautiful. I don't have that kind of skill yet but I'm working on it. Yeah, it's really, really cool to see people just build things out of that sort of work. But even as you're just getting started, you can use your saw to get really clean edges on your wire or in the case of a double half round, you can use your saw to split the shank and you get a really clean line and you don't have to do a lot of clean up that way as opposed to like-
Matt Stauffer:
Is this saw? Go ahead.
Aisha Blake:
Yeah, no, go ahead.
Matt Stauffer:
Is this saw sort of like a Dremel tool or what, is the actual shape of it?
Aisha Blake:
Great question. It is a hand saw and we do have-
Matt Stauffer:
Like a non, you're just moving something back and forth?
Aisha Blake:
You're just moving it up and down specifically. And you get really, really tiny saw blades to do this. And the trick that I've learned recently, actually the rule is to try and get to match the saw blade with the thickness of the metal. You want to get a saw blade that has three blades touching the metal at any one time.
Matt Stauffer:
Oh, really?
Aisha Blake:
Yeah. The three teeth?
Aisha Blake:
Three teeth. That's exactly it.
Matt Stauffer:
Wow. Okay, so that's your kind of rule that you know you have the right size. That's really interesting. And I assume that if you had one that was too big, then you'd be cutting more of the metal out than is appropriate. And then that's, right? Is that the main thing you're thinking about?
Aisha Blake:
Yeah, and it's also, depending on how rough you get with the saw, it can make it easier for the blade to break.
Matt Stauffer:
Also not a good thing, got it, okay.
Aisha Blake:
I have broken a handful in my time. I'm typically pretty careful, so I don't do it a lot. But especially if you're like training as a jeweler, my impression is that you break a lot of saw blades.
Matt Stauffer:
Got it, because they're very fine saw blades, so they're easy to break.
Aisha Blake:
And especially if you're trying to work quickly, it's really easy to just pull too hard and snap it.
Matt Stauffer:
Yep, wow. All right, so you've given me all the basic pieces that you did there. So at this point, you have cut the double round. You also have cut it, I'm sure to the appropriate length for the ring. And then I assume you soldered it to the other piece?
Aisha Blake:
Yeah.
Matt Stauffer:
Where do you go from there? Yeah, tell me about it.
Aisha Blake:
There's a little bit of sanding to get again, you want the flat surface and in this case we got double round. So we got to sand a flat surface so that we can attach it to the backing plate.
Matt Stauffer:
What's the finest sandpaper that you use at the end there?
Aisha Blake:
I think the finest I have, probably 1,000 grits.
Matt Stauffer:
I didn't even know that existed. I mean, I'm sure just because I'm working with wood all the time. So I'm like, I literally yesterday I don't have a, just totally aside, I don't have a micro saw. And so getting the right angle on the wood I'm cutting all the time can be difficult. And yesterday I bought 35 grit sandpaper because I'm just basically going to use it like a saw. I'm just like, I'm going to eventually sand this into the shape that I want. So we are working at complete opposite ends of the spectrum here. So all right. Sorry. So you sand it down because you want a flat area that's not double rounded to attach the thing to.
Aisha Blake:
Exactly.
Matt Stauffer:
And then where from there?
Aisha Blake:
And then exactly, we use the easy solder now because we did the hard for the bezel, the medium to get it onto the backing plate. Now we've got easy solder to attach the backing plate to the shank, and if all has gone well, it's the right size or a little bit small, because then I can put the whole ring on a mandrel and I can tap it into the right size with like a raw hide mallet. But that-
Matt Stauffer:
Really?
Aisha Blake:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Matt Stauffer:
That's amazing. I had no idea. So if you do that, it literally is just going to-
Aisha Blake:
It's just going to stretch a little bit.
Matt Stauffer:
It's going to stretch just a little bit?
Aisha Blake:
Yeah. Especially since you will have just heated it up. If you heat it, if you heat it up to a high enough time temperature, then you have a annealed the metal. And so it's going to be easier to work with.
Matt Stauffer:
Okay. And when you're doing the initial shaping of it, I mean the wire doesn't come shape like a finger. So I assume that initially when you're doing that, you have multiple different shapes. You said, did you call a mandrel?
Aisha Blake:
A mandreal, yeah.
Matt Stauffer:
So do you have multiples of those for each different ring size basically?
Aisha Blake:
So the mandrel is a long, it's like a long cylinder and it starts off small. So as you move down the mandrel, you get to larger and larger ring sizes.
Matt Stauffer:
Perfect. So when you originally formed it, did you form it around that ring size already to try and get you-
Aisha Blake:
You get close.
Matt Stauffer:
Okay, is it marked at the various ring sizes like little ticks? Okay.
Aisha Blake:
Yeah, exactly.
Matt Stauffer:
This makes sense. I can understand this. All right. So, you have attached them together. Now what?
Aisha Blake:
Attached them together. And now finally, we can add the stone, because this whole time, it's only silver and that's just to protect the stone. There are some that can withstand that kind of heat. So for example, I saw this really, really cool technique where you melt, you place your stone and it has to be something really hard, like a diamond. You place your stone in your setting and then you melt the metal around the stone and press the stone in and you have to be so careful, but it looks so cool. And it's perfectly shaped because you have made that setting by pressing the stone into the soft metal.
Matt Stauffer:
Yeah. Well, and as somebody who's never done this before, I wouldn't have had the baseline assumption that all the jewelry we tend to see is based on the restriction that you can't build that jewelry with the stone in it or else it will melt. And so therefore there are just things we've never seen done in jewelry or seldom seen done because of that restriction. So I wouldn't even have thought of that until you told me that. It's really interesting.
Aisha Blake:
I love looking at interesting jewelry and trying to figure out how it was made and like when I can't, that's when I'm like, "Oh, that's so cool."
Matt Stauffer:
That's awesome. I love that. So, okay. So you now can put the stone in and with this particular type of stone, you're just manually bending that lip over, right?
Aisha Blake:
Yes, so with this cabochon or cab, at this point, I should be able to just place it in. And it will all be the right size and everything is going to be fine and it will be a level on the backing plate. And then it's actually a really slow, well for me, at least with this ring, it's a really slow process to get it in the right shape. I'm a little less careful now.
Matt Stauffer:
Okay, this was your first ring.
Aisha Blake:
It was. So you want to get in this case where it's a triangle, you want to get each corner first and kind of pinch that in a little bit, but the whole thing should be really smooth all the way around the stone. And so you can use a couple different tools. One is literally just called a bezel pusher, to just push the bezel down onto the stone. And you should end up with just the barest lip that is just clamping down on the stone so that it never moves. I've been wearing this ring nonstop for, I don't even know how many years now. It's like at least five.
Matt Stauffer:
Wow, okay. And you don't have to worry about it falling out because you just know that this does the job.
Aisha Blake:
Yeah.
Matt Stauffer:
That's awesome. And so that literally you just walked us through an entire, like I know you just said it's not fine jewelry because you're not using gold or whatever, but like legitimate, nobody would know looking at that, that you had made it yourself piece of jewelry that you, as someone who does not do this as your day job are able to make, it's really freaking impressive. That brings me back to the question I asked you before now, can people buy the stuff that you're making?
Aisha Blake:
Oh yeah.
Matt Stauffer:
What's your primary target these days?
Aisha Blake:
So I've kind of become my team's jeweler in that like, "Oh you have a Tiffany necklace that is dirty. And yeah, sure. I'll clean that." Or like, "Oh your engagement ring is too small or you want a new one made." So literally one of my teammates, her ring, she got a ring that is gold plated. And I think most people are familiar with gold plate. Maybe not with gold filled jewelry. It's essentially the same thing, but with more gold. And so it lasts a little longer. But it's also, it comes with more of those restrictions, especially if you're trying to do anything by hand. And so we're going to remake her ring in pure golds, not pure, pure gold but like probably 14 karat gold, something like that. Yeah, and that sort of thing.
Matt Stauffer:
That's incredible.
Aisha Blake:
I was selling, I was selling jewelry for a while. I had a company called Zuri, and you can still find some of those photos at Zuri Jewelry Detroit on Instagram. But these days, I make jewelry on request. So I'll do one of the kinds, but there's not a whole lot left to buy off the shelf.
Matt Stauffer:
Got it. But if somebody wanted to, and I normally we don't get to this until the end, but I'm just, if somebody wanted some custom work from you and they heard this podcast, where would they go? Do they hit you on Twitter or do you have a website for it?
Aisha Blake:
You could hit me up on Twitter. I'm just saying you should wait.
Matt Stauffer:
Okay, cool. And all these links will be in the show notes and we'll talk about it at the end. All right, I love it. Is there anything else about working with silver that we didn't cover before we roll over to the last question? Obviously there's ton we didn't cover, but anything that you really want to make sure we get a chance to cover today?
Aisha Blake:
Oh, I would say that one of the really fun things about working with silver is that you can play around with the finish.
Matt Stauffer:
Okay. So tell me more about that.
Aisha Blake:
Mine tend to be pretty plain because I like the silver itself and I really want to focus on the stones. I have a whole, we didn't even get into the stone collecting habit that came out of this hobby. It's a whole thing.
Matt Stauffer:
I'm very curious to hear about that. Can you give me like the 20 second rundown? Where do you even buy the stones?
Aisha Blake:
Yeah, okay. So I found a woman in Michigan who was going to the same maker space as me at the time. And her father was like a professor of geology and had been collecting these stones for decades. And so she had some things that people don't mine anymore that were only available in Michigan, and she had this huge, huge collection that she would bring to sell. And so I can only imagine what her actual personal collection is like. But it definitely, I definitely caught the bug from her. And so I would show up and I would take my little paper plate and I would fill it with stones that I thought at some point in the future, I collected stones, cabochon specifically the way that a lot of developers collect-
Matt Stauffer:
Mechanical keyboards?
Aisha Blake:
Mechanical keyboards, yeah. I'm getting, we're getting into that too.
Matt Stauffer:
Oh yes. All right.
Aisha Blake:
I was going to say domain names.
Matt Stauffer:
Oh good. I feel called out right now. I have a problem. My name is Matt.
Aisha Blake:
Hi Matt.
Matt Stauffer:
I'm a domain hog. There you go. Okay. So I want to ask you a million more questions, but I know we're supposed to wrap it up. So we might have to do another round of this one. But I do want to ask if someone were, I feel like if somebody were wanting to get into this in the same way you did, one of the things they could do to go to Michael's and buy a book about wire stuff and buy the materials there. But if they wanted to geek out about stones, do you even know where the average person can go to do that? Or is that kind of like you got to find your local dealer kind of situation?
Aisha Blake:
So there is a shocking amount of Lapidarists that are on Instagram.
Matt Stauffer:
Okay. A Lapidarist is a stone collector?
Aisha Blake:
It's like a stone worker. They cut and sell stones. I think that's the term. I'm fairly certain. But yeah, I got, this was the only reason that I use Instagram is to look at stones and wants to buy them.
Matt Stauffer:
And drool over them, Google them.
Aisha Blake:
I tried not to buy them too often. But yeah, if you search jewelry, gemstones, that sort of thing on Instagram, you will find, you will very quickly find gemstone Insta.
Matt Stauffer:
Got it. It's a whole world.
Aisha Blake:
It's a whole world.
Matt Stauffer:
I love that.
Aisha Blake:
It's highly addictive. So be careful, yeah.
Matt Stauffer:
But if you want it, it's there. All right. Well, I could ask you a million more things, but I know because of the technical thing, I don't know, but I'm pretty darn sure we're over time. So let's just wrap it up. So last question. What insight or support did you receive or need when you were younger that you hope more people will give to others?
Aisha Blake:
Yeah. So I thought about this a lot and the first person that comes to mind whenever folks ask questions like that is my mom. She worked for IBM for a really long time. And that's kind of how I got introduced to tech at all, was through her. And the thing that she really impressed on me, and one of the things she really impressed on me was the importance of actively maintaining your relationships, your friendships specifically, and that had such an impact on my quality of life growing up. And it has absolutely carried into my career now, because I care so deeply about being there for people and for cultivating relationships. And that makes my job so much fun. I know that wherever I go or whatever topic I need to talk about or learn about, I can reach out to somebody.
Matt Stauffer:
Yeah. You know somebody who does that and who's an expert who you've made friends with over the years or whatever.
Aisha Blake:
Right. Yeah, and we'll have fun together as we talk about that thing.
Matt Stauffer:
I love that. And it makes sense. When I heard that you got a job as a DevRel, I was like of course you do. There's a certain type of person who's very well suited for a job that is essentially making friends, being helpful, caring for people, whatever. And so yeah. I love hearing that. That's really cool. All right. So as always, could talk longer, trying to cut it. If people want to follow you, learn more about what you're doing, all that kind of stuff, support you, pay you money, whatever, where should they go?
Aisha Blake:
Yeah. I would say Twitter is probably the best place to actually reach out for like a conversation. And I'm Aisha Blake on Twitter. I'm Aisha Codes on Twitch, which is where I do all the streaming. And I'm always looking for folks who are interested in developer education, to talk with me on my own show, which I will talk to you about later.
Matt Stauffer:
Yeah. And I'll have links to all these things in the show notes. And if you all didn't get a chance to listen to Prince's episode to which is a place where people go and share something they're doing usually in the computer. And most commonly they share in a live stream of video gaming, but some of us have started using it for programming instead, or various levels of technical education or whatever. So that's kind of the type of stuff that's going on there. So I will have links to your Twitter, to your website, to your Twitch, everything else. If I can find the Instagram of your old jewelry, I'll make sure I link that as well. And yeah, anything else you wanted to cover today or anything you wanted to shout out before we got a chance to wrap up?
Aisha Blake:
No, I think that's everything.
Matt Stauffer:
All right, Aisha, thank you so much. Not only for being here and being brilliant and wonderful person, but also for putting up with all the technical issues, everything else we ran into today, you're the freaking best. And I really appreciate you.
Aisha Blake:
Thank you so much for the invitation. This was a lot of fun.
Matt Stauffer:
I think so too. All right, for all the rest of you, until next time, be good to each other.