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The Art of Keum Boo - Golden Beads

turn silver tube into golden beads - with three project ideas!

About the Class

This class continues my series on Keum Boo, the ancient Korean technique that translates as “attached gold”.  

In the earlier classes, we concentrated on bonding gold to mainly flat silver surfaces. This time, I’ll show you how to carry out the Keum Boo process on larger, more three-dimensional shapes using silver tube to create beautiful beads that can be used in earrings, pendants, bracelets, and many other designs.  

Along the way, I’ll share tips and tricks for successfully applying Keum Boo to curved surfaces, as well as ways to shape and alter the beads using hammers and pliers so that you can create a variety of different finishes and styles. The class also includes simple design ideas for earrings and pendants to help inspire your own variations.

As with all Keum Boo work, even a very small amount of gold creates a striking effect, adding warmth and richness to your jewellery without needing large amounts of expensive material.  

As a bonus, the class also includes two extra videos showing you how to make simple earwires and headpins, giving you even more ways to turn your finished beads into wearable jewellery.

An understanding of the information in the first class in this series, the Golden Butterfly Pendantclass, is useful. All of the Keum Boo classes are part of the Jeweller's Bench membership - click here for more details

READY TO JOIN? CLICK HERE

You will need:

Materials:
* Examples in the class use sterling silver tubes with the following dimensions -
approx 26mm of ID (inside diameter) 3.5mm/OD (outside diameter) 4.5mm
approx 40mm of ID 5mm/OD 6mm
approx 40mm of ID 9mm/OD 10mm
* small pieces of 24k gold Keum Boo foil left over from other projects, enough to cover as much of the beads as you wish
* 0.8mm sterling silver wire for earwires and headpins
* chain for pendants
* Liver of sulpur patina

Equipment: (all the jewellery making kit listed here can be used for many different projects)
* Soldering kit - see here for more details
* Ultralite kiln or hot plate
* Steel or agate burnisher
* Wooden coffee stirrer (or similar) and small pot of water
* Texturing hammers
* Steel block and leather cushion (or folded tea towel!)
* Small mandrel
* Tracing paper and pencil
* Ruler, sharpie and scissors
* Jeweller's saw and bench peg
* Joint leveller or other tool for holding tube whilst sawing
* Wire cutters, flat nose pliers and round nosed pliers
* Emery paper or sanding pad
* Medium radial disc and medium silicon rubber wheel in pendant drill (optional)
* 6" flat file and needle files

An explanation of all the tools and materials that you need is included in the videos, and a downloadable equipment and materials list is available with the class.    

Don’t worry if you don’t have the same tube sizes in stock that I have used in the class examples. The same techniques can be used on whatever size tube you have in stock - or whatever size you need for the beads you'd like to make!

1 hour 35 minutes long, 15 lessons

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Course Curriculum

Joanne Tinley

Tutor and Founder of The Jeweller's Bench

The Jeweller's Bench is run by Joanne Tinley. She has been making her own jewellery for as long as she can remember and left her first career as a school teacher to set up business as a  jewellery designer and tutor nearly 20 years ago. She is
self-taught and like many people started with wire and beads. Learning how to solder, however, opened up a whole new world of jewellery making,  one that she is keen to share!

Legal Disclaimer: Every effort has been made to show safe working practices and to discuss health and safety aspects of jewellery making, but in the end I cannot take responsibility for how the tutorial information is used and how safely you work. Take the effort to set up your work area safely right from the start!
All Rights Reserved. No part of this course may be reproduced or shared without express, written consent from the author.

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