Jewelry by Augustus

 

The story of "Moonbow"

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Materials: 
 
Lightning bolts & inside pot - 24k gold (pure, solid)  
 
Colors of the bow - 
 
Red - Ruby (15)

Orange - Citrine (14)

Yellow - Yellow sapphire (13)

Green - Chrome diopside (12)

Blue - Blue topaz (10)

Indigo - Blue sapphire (9)

Violet - Amethyst (7) 
 
The Moon - Rainbow moonstone (1) 
 
Clouds – Rose cut quartz crystal (4) & faceted white topaz (21) 
 
Storm clouds – Faceted black tourmilinated quarts crystal (4) 
 
Wheat field & outer boarder coil: 14k/20% yellow gold filled wire 
 
Base plate, Mountains & Pot - 935 Argentium sterling silver (solid) 
 
Settings - 925 sterling silver (Solid) 
 
Solder - 14k yellow gold solder, 56% silver solder 
 
Mountain range: Mt. Pisgah near Asheville, NC as seen from Black Balsam Knob, exactly to scale, cut from a photograph. 
 
100% Handmade, 100% Natural gemstones and metals 
 
Asking Price - Contact me

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       In June of 2017, I had creativity in the forefront of my mind while driving 10 hours to visit my family in Pennsylvania. I had become a passionate jewelry artist in the previous two-and-a-half years. How I began making jewelry directly involves the loss of my older brother to a car accident in November of 2015. While on my road trip, I was brainstorming, trying to catch any good ideas that crossed my mind. I thought to myself, "I need to make something ridiculous, something completely outside of the box, and original!” I kept thinking about color. What can I do with color? Gemstones come in all sorts of colors. Then seemingly out of thin air, it hit me. If I could make a rainbow out of gemstones, that would be beautiful! I had never seen or heard of that being done. I thought of the pot of gold and, once I had this mythological pair of ideas formed, I knew I had something great to work with! I was already able to envision some of the finished piece on that day. Cruising on, I was very excited! Creativity had struck me.
 
       Once I reached the next computer, I went right to work, invigorated! Step 1: Identify the best gemstone colors to make a rainbow with. Long story short, it took me two years, working towards my goal as diligently as I could with the time and money I had available. It involved many milestones and two very disappointing failures. Oh yea, and ALLOT of fire! I learned about myself while making this piece, as well as about methods, materials, and torches.
 
       Once I had the design details of what turned out to be a moonbow, the most challenging step was to solder the silver and gold together just right. How hard could that be? Well, it turned out to be one of the hardest things I've ever done in my life. 
 
       So, without having ever done a massive soldering job like this, and not finding or hearing of anyone else doing it, I had to figure it out for myself. The task at hand was to solder over 100 mostly tiny silver prong settings, some pure gold, and a large piece of silver to a relatively thin sheet of sterling silver, all at once! It had to happen all at once, with even heat, or else the silver sheet that is the back of the piece would warp.. After extensive thinking and what I thought was brilliant engineering, I had my method. It was crazy, but it should work great, I thought! I would build an inert gas atmosphere kiln. I had everything designed, and found the perfect kiln for the job. I custom built the chamber myself to harness the inert atmosphere. This was important to prevent oxidation of the silver while it exceeded 1,000°F (537.7°C) required for melting all the solder. Specialized kilns like this cost tens of thousands of dollars, but I had this all figured out for only a couple thousand dollars. Nitrogen tank, regulator, kiln, chamber, water cooling system, sealed air tight with meticulous attention to detail; I was ready to commence testing. What should have worked did NOT work. Modification after modification, nothing was working. I was not giving up though! Very dismayed, I thought, now I have it! I must need to use Helium so that I can more efficiently purge air (and oxygen) in the kiln atmosphere from the bottom. Still, solder would not flow, and I was getting very wacky results from this that were just incomprehensible. I had to give up on 9 months and a couple thousand dollars of work. To this day, I don’t fully understand why my kiln didn't work...  It was back to the drawing board. I was not giving up! (Edit: I think I know why it didn't work now.)
 
       So now all I had left was fire, pure raw flame at my disposal. I knew keeping the base metal flat was a nearly impossible feat, given the expansion coefficient of the silver plate. There was no way I could see it happening, all that metal getting hot enough to melt solder without major warping. I had to give it my best shot though; I had nowhere else to turn. I got a large torch tip (#6 heating) and fastened it to my torch rig and tanks. It was a big oxy/propane flame, the biggest I'd ever worked with. I believed it could work, had to give it my best shot. Now, I had prepared the precious materials and had them set perfectly into place just how it needed to be soldered, in one heating. By the way - preparing these parts takes weeks and incredibly precise attention to detail, not to mention the cost of the metals at hand. Upon torching the plate with the meticulously placed parts on top, it warped like crazy! It was all ruined, reduced to scrap metal! With all the time, money and effort I had put into this already, I was literally beside myself… It took days for the weight of the situation to fully sink in. I had never fired these precious and carefully prepared materials before, out of fear of ruining them, and I did just that. Devastated and losing hope, I sort of gave up inside. Not the kind of giving up where you forget about it, more of a letting go, an acceptance. Any hurry that I felt, any dwelling on how much time and work went into this project thus far got tucked somewhere deep inside. I tucked it into a place that I could still feel it, but it drove me to apply myself patiently with centered perseverance. 
 
       Finally I knew what I had to do, for sure this time... It was just such a ridiculous proposition, and so dangerous, that I had never really thought it to be plausible or practical. All of that had to go out the window; I had to figure out how this gigantic oxygen/propane torch was going to be practical and super safe. That is what I did! I educated myself on every aspect of welding torch design and operation. Over the course of about 6 months I carefully constructed a magnificent oxy/propane torch that would provide ample and perfectly even heat, just like I needed it. It is a mammoth absurdity of combustion. The amount of engineering that had to go into this thing working for me was insane, but I did it! I finally, in July of 2019, completed the soldering process. It made possible the piece of work that would redefine my career going forward. Shortly thereafter I completed the piece, and I am proud to present my most ardent creation, Moonbow! 
 
With gratitude, 
 
Augustus Newell

Jewelry by Augustus

Independent Artist of Asheville, NC 
  

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