HC Designs

Handcrafted Items built by hands and thoughts. You won't find my items anywhere else!
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About HC Designs:
 
Recently, I have discovered the love for metallurgy.  It began one day making beads with a mother daughter day.  Encouraged by others, by the beading jewelry I decided to take it another leaping step into metal lurgy. 
 
Santa Fe Community College here at Gainesville, Florida has a wonderful community and departments for students who want to learn nothing but pure art. 
 
I took fabrication and casting class at the same time.  The techniques overlap, as for a new student, everything is new.  Believe it or not, I struggled with fabrication, the ability to learn, understand, and apply soldering didn't kick in. 
 
Now I have taken four additional classes of casting and applying the technique of soldering and other fabrication processes that I've finally able to learn and apply.  The combination of the processes can create wonderful items.  The casting class can be taken more then once, and each time its taken, something knew is learned. 
 
On the side of making metals into wearable jewelry art, I am a cultural anthropologist student and I work for University of Florida as a lab technician.
 
Other random things I like getting into is playing at the pool hall, travelling, taking photography, scuba diving, and the occassional learning of the guitar.
                                                                                                                                       

Everything and anything you purchase from has a garentee waranty to be fixed, if it should break.  If that means it' needs a polish touch up, or if you by something that has metal loops and needs a new metal loop, even a chain maille that might loose a ring, all of this I will do for free.
 

History of equipment and waxes
The equipment and most of the waxes came from my Uncle Don and Aunt Betty.  They have spent over 20 years in the making of jewelry and done extremely well in the business.  Two years ago my Uncle passed away and my aunt couldn't do the business on her own.  She saw that I took up in the interest of fabricating and casting and literally starting throwing cabachon stones at me to work on projects with. 
 
With in a few months, I ended up having all the equipment in my garage for tools, fabricating machines, including lapidary equipment, and casting equipment.  It still feels all like "Uncle Don's" stuff when I use it. 
 
So now, most of the work is done here in the garage.  I still go to the studio for soldering pieces together.  It will be a while before I get the tools up for soldering in the garage.