Setting Challenging Stones with Alex Boyd

Date:  Saturday April 1
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Time:  9:00 am to 4:00 pm

Cost:  $105 BoMA members 
           $125 for non-members

Materials fee: $85

Location:  Boulder Metalsmithing Association
                  4919 Broadway St, Unit 15
                  Boulder, CO 80304

CLASS DESCRIPTION
Alex will provide strategies for setting stones with more difficult shapes including acute angles and other complicating factors. Students will learn how to fabricate bezels for trillion and pear shaped stones and how to set them.  Principles learned will apply to many different shapes of stones.  

​ABOUT THE INSTRUCTOR
Alex comes from a family of artists.  His mother is a printmaker, father an architect, uncle a jeweler, aunt a potter and brother an illustrator.  After exploring many mediums he starting taking metalsmithing seriously about 9 years ago.  For the last 7 years Alex has worked at Gusterman Silversmiths making custom jewelry and doing repairs.  Simultaneously, he's been making his own work for galleries, shows, commissions and because he just can’t help himself. 

Alex's work is a meditation on materials and their limits. An interaction between hands, metal, stone and the wearers body.  All his pieces are produced by hand using techniques that are centuries or even millennia old. In an increasingly computerized world Alex takes solace in being an anachronism. Objects formed from human hands contain an energy and dynamism unobtainable through any other means, as if the object is charged by its maker.  The medium of jewelry and its inherent proximity to the wearers body is, for Alex, the most effective means of communicating that energy.  An energy expressed through the languages of color, form and texture.  

Prerequisites
Students should have a firm grasp of basic jewelry skills like soldering, sawing, filing and flex-shaft use

Tools students need to bring

• saw frame and blades 2/0 - 4/0
• hand files (half-round at least)
• needle file assortment
• goldsmiths hammer
• assortment of jewelers pliers (chain, flat, half-round, etc.)
• sandpaper
• bezel roller and pusher
• cash or a check made out to Alex for the materials kit*

Materials Kit* $85 

• thick silver sheet and silver strip for bezels
• hard silver solder
• trillion and pear shaped stones
• ball and bud bur 
• drill bits
• dop wax and dowel

*Materials kit purchase is required for all BoMA workshops. The kit insures all students have the same tools and materials require to learn the technique and allows the instructor and the students to focus on the technique rather than the materials.

MAXIMUM NUMBER OF STUDENTS: 10. Students will be required to sign a waiver. Participants must be 18 or older.

CANCELLATION POLICY

• You may cancel up to 10 business days prior to the start of the class and receive a full refund, less $10 processing.
• Cancellations 5-10 business days prior to the start of the class are eligible for a 50% refund.
• Cancellations occurring less than 5 business days prior to the start date will not be refunded,
• In the event we have to cancel a class, you will be notified prior to the start date and will be issued a full refund.

Questions About the Class
Send an email and we'll get back to you

​Register on Meetup

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