I recently made this cold join piece from bronze and nickel silver. I had to remake the top piece and decided that I liked it enough to "spring" for sterling. After I cut out the sterling and replaced the nickel silver, I was surprised to find that I really couldn't see the difference. After working with so much nickel silver recently I didn't really care for the softness of the sterling. The 3x3 square of sterling that I used is valued at approximately $75 on today's market and the nickel silver is $4.75 for the same size sheet!
The only downside to Nickel Silver is that there are some people who are allergic to it. If you are making jewelry for re-sale you need to clearly mark it. I have been working with it a lot more lately and am really starting to like it a LOT. In the kind of work I like to do (very handmade rustic) I love the looks I can get from it and like to mix it with bronze to keep things interesting. In this photo below, the wire and top sheet are nickel silver and the bottom sheet is sterling.
You can polish it up very nicely and if you don't like your results you can toss into your "random pieces" pile to start over instead of crying....
The scratched out finish on the "stop" piece is one of my favorites finishes right now. I use a piece of fine sandpaper and sand the surface changing my direction frequently but keeping a straight line as best as possible. The glass piece is a vintage tricycle reflector and both are made with 22 gauge nickel silver sheet, the patina is heat.
The piece below was made with 22 gauge nickel silver sheet, 22 gauge bronze sheet, 12 gauge nickel silver wire and 12 gauge sterling wire---really, I CAN'T TELL WHICH IS THE STERLING! The 12 gauge nickel silver wire runs about 50 cents a foot. You will need strong tools and will build some good muscles as it is stiffer than sterling.
I'm kind of staple crazy right now as I'm working on cold join classes for 2012. I'll be blogging on them sometime in the future...they are so fun!
See more on the Staple Bezel Blog for a simple staple to get your creative ideas flowing...
