A Christmas 2014 gift for my wife, these earrings are fully-functional light engines from the Spyglass v1 project. The rings and clasps are .999 silver. The custom jewelry box was manually machined from C660 bearing bronze.
In 60 seconds the bandsaw makes a cut that takes 6 minutes with a hacksaw.
Beneath the ruddy exterior lies a luscious red metal.
Knurling scissors squeeze the soft metal up into diamonds. Knurling is done before drilling so as not to collapse the thin walls.
A scratch pass ensures the threads are setup perfectly before committing.
A parting blade is used to carefully separate the workpiece from the stock.
After parting off, the piece is flipped around and the face cleaned up.
For the next piece, a small pilot drill is followed by a much larger one.
A bore gauge has two spring-loaded hammers that fill the entire bore and lock in place.
Bore gauge are transfer tools - they do not measure directly but instead transfer the measurement to a tool that can (like this micrometer).
This depth micrometer is used to check the depth of a hole.
Test-fitting the threads.
The diameters have been carefully matched to leave a nearly invisible seam.
Stamping the date into the upper piece.
