Michele McDonald's class was the Intro to Jewelry class. Michele had quite a few designs. Besides soldering, the process that would be used for the majority of them was learning to use the jeweler's saw and piercing. Armed with a page of designs, Michele selected one and transferred it to the metal. Once transferred, the design was made permanent with a scribe so the lines could be easily followed while sawing.

   First ...... holes were drilled so that the saw blade could be inserted. Enabling Michele to cut out any "interior holes" in the design. The design has four heart shaped elements to cut out of the inside of the piece. After the layout, a hole was drilled inside the line of each "heart shaped" element. This hole enables you to disconnect the saw blade from the saw frame and pass the blade through that hole in the sheet and reattach the blade to the saw frame again. After cutting out each heart shaped element the saw blade is again disconnected from the frame so that it can be removed from the finished cut and passed through the next hole and reconnected to the saw frame. Once all the inside cuts were done, all that is left to do is cut out the profile and clean up all the edges. The image above shows the design sheet and the beginning of the piercing.