Change of Plans

        Upon arrival to the workplace today, I was expecting to begin working on the bracelet like my uncle and I decided, but plans changed when my mother asked me to make her a pendant for mothers day so my uncle decided we should work on that. She told be she loved the ring and wanted a round bezel set stone with a chain that could go through the pendant. My Uncle Fareed asked me what I wanted to do, so I told him what my mom asked for and he thought it was a great idea. He took me into the giant walk in safe and asked me what stone I wanted to use. I told him that my moms favorite color is purple so I thought a nice amethyst stone would be nice. I also recommended a ruby because of her July birthday in which he thought were both excellent ideas. I left the vault for a minute to go and grab a drink of water and my Uncle Fareed followed me out with a box of heart shaped blue topaz stones.... not even close to what I was planning on using. He gave me a stone and told me we would use that instead of something round which made me a little frustrated because I knew it would push me out of my comfort zone, but I kept my cool.

       The first thing I had to do was take a sheet of metal and shape it into a heart. This was damn near impossible for me. I sat there for about an hour trying to shape the metal into a heart and I could not do it. I found myself getting so frustrated that every few minutes I would end up throwing the piece into the drawer and dropping the pliers that I was using to shape the metal out of frustration. Then my Uncle Marwan, the comedian of the family, showed back up to work and watched me only to laugh at my constant mistakes. Surprisingly this cheered me up a little because he was standing there laughing which made me realize how funny I actually looked from an outsiders perspective. Eventually, my Uncle Fareed came back to help me out and realized that I could not shape the silver into the heart. He was shocked that I couldn't do it and as he was telling me how easy it is and that I should be able to do it, he shaped the heart in about five seconds that would fit the stone perfectly.

       I then had to solder the heart shaped piece onto a flat metal sheet and saw out the shape of the heart for the bottom. Uncle Fareed told me to to file the sides of the metal sheet so that it was even all the way around but I misunderstood and filed all the way down to the original metal heart piece. this meant that we had to solder another flat metal sheet to the bottom. We then had to shape another heart shaped piece so it would match the original piece. This piece was used as the side. Next came the most tedious part of the entire pendant. I had to sit there, using a small triangular file, and file small triangles into the piece that we had shaped into a heart with about two millimeters in between. I then had to flip it over and solder small, round pieces into the other side of the metal so there was a nice design when I soldered the original piece that my uncle shaped to the filed piece. I had to have stabbed myself in the fingers ten times while trying to file this down. The last part of the solder work was adding when more heart shaped plate to the bottom of the pendant, that way the points from the filed triangles wouldn't poke the person wearing them. This was the last thing I did before leaving for practice.