[Jewelry making - Article 00962] - [Orchid] Heavy 14K Gold Cuban Link Bracelet

[Glenn Block]

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    Hi Alan, I want to thank you for taking the time to reply to my
    inquiry of making this bracelet. 

    You stated, "The most straight forward way to make this bracelet is
    to fabricate it, making oval links from round wire. After the links
    are closed and soldered the chain is twisted to line up the links.
    Once the twisted chain lies flat, file the top and bottom to either a
    flat or curved contour. " 

    This Cuban link bracelet that I am referring to is a very heavy
    link. I am not even sure if there is gold wire thick enough to
    fabricate the type of link I am talking about.  Even if there was, in
    my opinion, it would be too difficult to bend or twist, since it is
    so thick. 

    I did go forth with the project, and now the bracelet is complete. I
    made the links with a vacuum casting machine and hand soldered every
    other link.  A picture of the completed bracelet can be found at the
    following URL.  www.kbacpa.com\Cubanlink.jpg  

    The only thing I have yet to do is solder a safety clasp across the
    gap on the end open link. 

    The unique feature of this bracelet, is that there is no clasp(other
    than a safety), and the links themselves are weaved together to make
    the closure.  This design makes it almost impossible to lose the
    bracelet, even if the safety opens. 

    Casting the links was a fun project and the good news is that I could
    make 20 links on one tree and cut out a lot of hand fabrication.
    However, I did have to file and hand finish each link individually.
    But as you can see from the picture, the links came out uniformly
    with ever so slight variations.   This project called for the machine
    made appearance as  opposed to "the hand crafted look."  I love the
    hand crafted look too, but there is nothing like casting to give a
    uniform appearance if that is what you are looking for. 

    My original query was more pointed as to how to assemble the links
    as opposed to fabrication.  Since this was the first bracelet I ever
    made, I was wondering if there was a method to join all of the links
    together somehow without having to solder every other link.  Perhaps
    there is a way to cast wax links in a way whereby the wax links are
    joined together in advance of casting.  I suppose that can be done,
    but must be pretty tricky to set up tree and sprue system.  If
    anyone has ever done this, I would love to hear from  you. 

Thanks.
Glenn Block
Shardan Jewelry


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