Rite of Passage Part 2-The Crucible
It wasn’t long after I demonstrated that I could produce a piece of jewelry to my father that my grandfather decided it was HIS turn to school me in old-school jewelry-making.
He had my father melt a lump of gold and pour it into a long, shallowly grooved metal crucible that had a coating of motor oil on it. When he poured the gold in, of course it made a lot of smoke and smelled terrible and we had to open the windows. The crucible produced a 5” long, 1/4” square piece of stock, which they quenched in water so we could work with it.
Then we went over to the milling machine to start the reduction process. The two rollers in the mill each had a series of notches across them, in incrementally smaller sizes , an adjuster above them by which you could bring the rollers closer together, and a cranking arm to turn the rollers.
My grandfather had me turn the crank while he ran the stock through the rollers. I couldn’t see any difference at first. In fact, I couldn’t even turn the crank at first: the wheels were too close together for the stock to have any chance of passing through. Gradually the stock got longer and thinner from the compression. By the time we were finished with the mill, the stock was now about a 1/16” square and about 30” long. Most confusing to me was the fact that it was still square. So I asked my my grandfather; he gave me a BIG smile that I could not interpret.
He got a steel plate out of a drawer and clamped it into the vice of a workbench that was in turn very well-anchored to the wall. I had seen this plate before, but didn’t understand what it was for. It was about 10” long, 2” tall, 1/4” thick and most importantly had about 60 holes in it, tapering down from 1/4” to less than 1/32”. Then it was time: he took a step back, handed the stock to my father, and watched as my father repeated for me what he had been taught as a child.
Looking back on this now, I am in awe of the timelessness of this tradition, knowing that it has followed humanity around the world, throughout its ages.
My father filed the end of the stock to a point until he could pass 1” of it through a hole that stopped the rest, grabbed the point with a pair of pliers, and pulled the rest of the stock through the hole. It made a horrible screeching sound. And then the square stock was round. Little bits of gold laid on the jaw of the vice. But it was done.
Now it was my turn. I put the wire in the next hole and pulled. Nothing happened. Wouldn’t budge. I told my dad maybe it needed a finer point. I don’t remember if he filed it or I did; it made no difference. This was a setup. I was sure of it. Even though I had just watched my dad do it. Both my dad and grandfather told me that I just had to pull harder.
Eventually I had one foot on the workbench for leverage, and gave it the best tug I could without losing my grip on the point (I must have had some good hand strength) and the wire finally moved an inch. More or less in unison my father and grandfather both smiled and walked away, and told me to keep pulling. It was then that I understood why the workbench was so heavily secured to the wall.
Once I had drawn what was now a wire down to the size they considered appropriate, my grandfather handed me a large nail and told me to wrap the wire around the nail as tight as I could and cover the nail. I did this. Then he removed the nail from the spiral, sat me down at the workbench and told me to cut down one side of the spiral with the jeweler’s saw. The loops fell into the tray of the workbench, and soon enough I had a decent sized pile. Then he took a couple of pairs of pliers, opened the links, and closed them again around each other the lightbulb went off: I was going to make a gold chain!
I was hella proud! I could do this. The reality was, it didn’t take long to be humbled again. They had me make links out of the entire wire, which was now over 8’ long. I was soon to see why.
One of them (I don’t remember which) ran a small ingot of gold through the flat rollers until it was a sheet, paper thin. Then they literally took a pair of scissors and started cutting it into 1/16” wide strips, still attached at one end, like the tynes of a comb. Then over a small piece of asbestos, they crosscut the sheet, a dozen or so tiny squares of gold now sitting on the asbestos.
Then my father had to demonstrate, his father watching over him, how to solder the links closed. A miniature vice (not more than 4” with a 1” jaw) sat on top of the workbench, also on the small piece of asbestos. The vice was used to hold the link to be soldered.
There was a small glass bottle with a lead acid brush they told me was called glycerin. He put a small dab of glycerin on the link to be soldered, then lit the oxy-acetylene torch, turned the flame down to a pencil tip, waved it over one of the tiny metal clippings, which promptly rolled up in a ball.
He touched the ball with the tip of an ice pick, which dutifully transferred itself to the pick, then moved it over the waiting link, touched it again in proximity of the link with the torch and plop, the little ball dropped onto the link, sealing it closed.
Well, for as good as my hands and eyes were, they weren’t THAT good. It took way more work than necessary for me to get those little snips of metal onto the ice pick. And I destroyed 3/4 of the links before I could get those little blobs to transfer. I went through the entire 8 feet of wire I had painstakingly produced without even a foot of chain to show for it. Adding insult to injury, my grandfather insisted that I had to go through the whole routine again.
And when I was finally done…he had me start another one! He/they kept me busy all summer to produce three chains. I think (though I’m not sure, looking back 50 years) that I had some serious doubts about the motivation for all of this work.
In the fall we took a family Sunday drive to Rosemead, where my grandfather conducted some business with an antique dealer (the father of Art Suel, who I have a story dedicated to). Well to my utter shock and amazement, they put a velvet cloth on top of the counter/display case, and my grandfather proceeded to put my three gold chains on the counter!
My head hurt trying to figure out what as going on. Was this man going to grade my work? I wasn’t particularly proud of it. Though all the links were closed, they were FAR from uniform.
He carefully examined all three, then handed my grandfather some money for one of them, then attached a small black rubber band to each end, took off his glasses, attached them to the rubber band, and PUT THE WHOLE THING BACK ON!
WAIT! WHAT? Me, a ten year old boy, made something an adult would pay money for? And wear?
He explained that he liked the uniqueness of it, the fact that someone could tell it was a handmade thing in an age of mass production. I didn’t understand it then. But I knew I was damn proud. And I’d like to think my dad scored a point or two with his dad that day too.
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The best part for me was discovering that I managed to keep up with my fluid intake, only losing one pound of water weight on an 18 mile hike. That improves my odds for doing the PCT.
This is when I discovered a new and thoroughly disconcerting fact. My fingers were SO soaking wet that the keypad on the phone was non-responsive. I literally jabbed at alpha-numeric jibberish and got nothing.
Everyone else slept fine.
End stage cancer. 50 years old, with a year and a half old baby.
