My First Aluminium Necklace

I've been working on my design for my first anodised aluminium necklace and have my pieces ready for the anodising process.

I have cut, filed, sanded, drilled and polished all pieces. I've used a wheel and polish specially made for use with aluminium.


They do resemble faces, but that wasn't the plan!

I am still planning to make some changes to my anodising bath in hope to prevent the current from cutting out. I'm planning to drill holes in the aluminium angle so that the titanium wire will fit snugly in. Caswell's website has a very helpful forum which I need to study a little more, there was an excellent photo of a set up you may like to check out, about 1/2 way down the page.

As I have 14 pieces to anodise, I need to have my racks changed to accommodate them easily. My design is to have the base one colour and the 'nose' section another. I will then need to rivet the pieces together very carefully as not to damage the anodising.

I thoroughly enjoyed working with the aluminium, it is so light weight and responds well to all the facets of metalsmithing with a few exceptions, such as being unable to solder. In saying that I did read that it can be soldered with special solders, but I haven't looked into it any further. I will continue to design with cold connections for the time being, it's a much bigger challenge!