Today I’m working on making a pendant from the little silver hummingbird skull I press formed during our last visit. I’m engraving a piece of Grade 2 titanium for the back of the pendant. I’m hoping the gray color of the titanium will coordinate nicely with the bright silver color of the hummingbird skull.
In the above two images, I’ve completed engraving one side of the feather layout, and excavated the void that the hummingbird skull will sit in.
Here, you can see the holes I’ve drilled in the titanium plate for some silver wire staples to hold the hummingbird skull on with. Normally, I would use solder as well, but I know of no way to solder titanium. You can weld titanium with a very expensive jewellry welder, but I don’t have access to one of those…
I’ve also played around with press forming copper sheet around a small beach rock. With the raven skull I made from shortening the beak of a pressed hummingbird skull, I’ve created a Northwest-style raven fetish of a local Puget Sound Native American creation legend.
Here’s the story: In the beginning, Raven lived in the spirit world, but one day he carried a rock away over the sea. When Raven dropped the stone into the water, it swelled and swelled, becoming the land we know today.