Silversmithing Skills with Oscar Saurin

You will learn:

• Precision crafting: Harness the power of hammers, stakes and fly press to shape forms with accuracy and finesse, elevating your craftmanship to new heights.
• Components integration: Unlock the ability to fit various components together, ensuring each piece aligns perfectly to create a harmonious finished product.
• Master soldering on a larger scale: Approach soldering with assurance and precision, learning to control heat effectively and troubleshoot any challenges that arise and overcome obstacles with ease.
• Excellence in finishing: Gain confidence in every stage of the finishing process, from shaping to surface finish, ensuring your work reaches the highest standards of quality and craftmanship.
• Elevate your practice: Walk away with more than theoretical knowledge and with a masterpiece – a finished rice bowl and its lid, demonstrating your newfound skills and setting a new standard for your practice.

Delivered in-person in the Silversmithing Workshop over three sessions, this course will: 

• Help you build your fundamental silversmithing skills including forming, using multiple methods (hammering, raising, blocking, planishing and pressing).
• Upgrade your assembly expertise with fitting or pinning in place components ready for soldering. 
• Broaden your soldering skills, using different grade of solders, their benefits and drawbacks when working on a larger scale.  
• Elevate your finishing capability, including filing techniques, using emery paper/pumice, polishing motor and various decorative finishes such as butler, matting and polished finishes.

Please bring your own basic tool kit, including but not limited to:

• Half-round hand file with handle.
• Set of Needle Files.
• Small ‘well-defined’ Steel Rule and a sharp scriber.
• Piercing frame and blades (2/0 or 3/0).
• Solder probe or tweezers.
• Small paint brush for borax application.
• Tin Snips.
• Pair of Dividers.
• Large compass with pen attachment.
• Protective clothing or clothing you do not mind getting dirty e.g. apron, and closed-toe shoes.

Optional:

• Notebook and pen.
• Spectacles or head visor (if required).
• Protective clothing or clothing you do not mind getting dirty, e.g., an apron, and closed-toe shoes.

• Metal sheets and wire in the size and quantity required.
• All equipment necessary to make the bowl.
• Solder as required, including soldering station equipment.

Please note: In the interest of keeping the course price low, the materials provided do not include silver, you will be working with gilded metal. You are invited to buy your own silver if you wish to do so. Please speak to a member of the professional training team via email at professional.training@goldsmithscentre.org to be provided with the size and quantity needed for this project. Silver sheets and wire can be purchased from Cooksongold located in Hatton Garden, a stone’s throw from the Goldsmiths’ Centre.

Intermediate: Practical experience and understanding of listed skills required.

Participants at the intermediate level should have prior experience in a workshop environment and the ability to work independently on fundamental tasks. They should be comfortable with processes such as piercing, filing, and soldering, and possess a working knowledge of workshop tools and techniques. This level focuses on refining basic skills, introducing more complex tasks, and developing the ability to troubleshoot and work with greater precision and autonomy.

We are committed to making our training programmes and events as inclusive and accessible as possible. If you have any access requirements, please inform us as early as possible so we can make the necessary arrangements. While we will do our best to accommodate your needs, advance notice is essential to ensure we can provide appropriate support.

To discuss your requirements when booking tickets for our Goldsmiths’ Centre training programmes, please contact us at boxoffice@goldsmiths-centre.org 

We believe that talent should not be held back. Here at the Goldsmiths’ Centre, we are open, accessible and inclusive to all. Our Access Grants help anyone to build thriving creative careers, supporting jewellers, silversmiths and allied industry practitioners to access our training courses for free.

If you need help to cover fees for our business and technical skills short courses, please apply for one of our Access Grants. To find out more and read our application criteria, click here

The Access Grants are delivered by the Goldsmiths' Centre and funded via the Goldsmiths’ Foundation.