The Medicinal Effects of Copper

I wrote a blog several years ago about copper jewelry and the medicinal benefits of it.
The website that I wrote it on is long gone, and I assume that the article is sitting out there in the ether somewhere, but I sure can't find it.  First of all - I lay no claims to any medical knowledge, other than being the wife of a retired dentist.  Neither am I a witch doctor or a holistic guru...but this is what I have seen.

Over three years ago my husband was diagnosed by a very competent orthopedic doctor with rheumatoid  arthritis of the wrist.  In about four months, he had had three attacks where his wrist swelled to almost three times it normal size and it was extremely painful.  Each time he could not play golf for almost a week. I was doing allot of work with copper wire at that time and literally begged him to let me make him a copper bracelet and he finally relented because he would have done anything, at that point, not to have another attack.  My husband is definitely not the bracelet type, but he was desperate.  He will have had the bracelet for four years this May and has not had another attack since and he wears it 24/7.

He was so amazed by all this that he did some research and the article that most impressed him was on Web MD, and it was written by a German physician who had been the doctor for almost all the copper mines in Germany. What struck John the most was the fact that in all the years that this doctor worked at the Copper Company, he had never had one patient with rheumatoid arthritis.  We filed this in the fact file that really isn't too important and went on with our lives.

About three weeks ago, I sold a copper bracelet to a woman in my neighborhood.  She bought it because she liked the design and the way that it looked. I told her John's little story because she said that she ( and basically her whole extended family ) suffers tremendously from arthritis and she had lived in constant pain since 1999.  Subsequent visits with her have lead to her believing that this bracelet that she bought is a miracle worker.  Not only was she sleeping better because of the absence of pain, but the constant pain she has lived in for the last 12 years gets lesser every day.  I truly hope that this continues to be the case, it has really made me feel like a miracle worker as it is...I would hate to lose that.

Her husband is an engineer who worked in the IT industry.  So this man knows his way around a computer.  He has been so intriqued with the improvement in his wife that he too has done some research and the article that struck him the most was written by a physician, an orthopedist.  He said that several years ago, a complete scientific research project was conducted on the relationship between copper and arthritis...and the results were that the research scientists could find no relationship at all.  However, this doctor contended that any orthopedic doctor who diagnosed rheumatoid arthritis in a patient should recommend that the patient, at least, try a copper bracelet and see if it offered any relief to the pain.

I wear a copper bracelet 24/7 too and I am still able to do things with my hands that should be difficult in someone of my advanced years, and hopefully that will continue ad infinatum. Here's the new bracelet I just made and am wearing now...and it will soon be available in my shop with either the sterling silver finish, which I prefer and all in copper .

I am very partial to copper and have allot of bracelets in my shop from plain and simple to fairly ornate and decorative.

How to Patina your Metals for Jewelry

I was asked to do a tutorial on using Liver of Sulfur, and why anyone would ask me is beyond me - but they did, so here I am.  First of all, I need to tell you that not only am I a self taught metallurgist, but my husband, a retired dentist, also lays claim to that title for my business,  Linda Sudimack, artisan.  Since my college degree was in Chemistry, we constantly bicker over who has more claim to that title. I am also a compulsive reader - I will even read a cereal box occasionally if I am desperate enough...so I have read every little thing that I have been able to find about how to patina your metals without using a torch.

I have to say here that I love copper - I love working with it - I love it's consistency when bending it - I love the price as compared to sterling....but I am not an orange person.  I do not like the color of copper, but I do love it with a patina. The first jewelry that I made was with copper wire and it was patineed, not very well, but even then, I knew what I wanted!

The product itself, Liver of Sulfur, comes in both liquid and rock form and although I have purchased the liquid form, we have so far only used the rock form.  There are also some other products out there, Rio has one and  Jodi Bombardier mentions in her book that she uses because it doesn't smell as bad as LOS...but she urges you to take it outside, so we have stuck with LOS, because I really don't need another product to cope with.

I think that every one who writes a book, has their own recipe for the LOS mixture, the more anal ones actually measure their water, John would never do that and he does all my oxidizing for me.  Just to be a little technical - that is actually what you are doing - you are oxidizing (or tarnishing) - the metal that you hope to darken.  Again, lots of opinions on water temperature, we have settled on very hot tap water because the rock melts quickly here. John is a natural conservationist ( he's cheap) so he adds as little LOS as he can get away with. You want your liquid to be darkish brown and it does stink like rotten eggs.  We add 2 to 3 drops of household ammonia to this for better colors. We purchased a plastic rectangular bowl at Bed, Bath, and Beyond, that is only used for LOS and it has it's own lid, it is about 4" x 10" x 5" deep and it works for everything I've done so far.  They say that you must use glass or plastic, not a metal pan and that makes sense to me.

I purchased a flat ladle thingie with holes for fast dipping small things - I also made a similar one from wire that is much smaller.  I also bought a wooden toast lifter (tongs) from B,B, and Beyond which is much cheaper than bamboo tongs for jewelers. We use this to hold the things that are being dipped and to pick fallen goodies off the bottom.

After your piece is oxidized to your liking, you will want two bowls with cold water to stop the process.  We use 2 large cottage cheese containers both filled with cold water.  The first dipping is into the cold water that has a couple of tablespoons of baking soda in it and then they go into plain cold water. The baking soda halts the oxidation process by neutralizing the acid.

Now comes the hard part - taking off what you have just worked so hard to put on - but done artistically, of course.  I use one of two products, either 0000 steel wool, from your local hardware shop, or a 3 M product that I buy at Rio.  I think that I prefer the steel wool, but it does leave little threads on your work that are hard to remove, even in the tumbler. The 3 M product does a great job, but I think that it is more work, they are like sanding pads in 4 grits that are rubbery on one side.  I often use a brass brush, from Rio, to scrub the interior of my pieces. I don't like to tumble after oxidizing because it usually takes off too much.

You can cover your LOS solution and as long as it has color it will work.  It is non toxic, although odiferous, and can be disposed of in a garage sink.  You could put it down your kitchen drain too, if you want a good reason for eating out for the next few nights.

That's about it - we tend to wait until we have several pieces to do, and spend the morning on the patio...oxidizing, and cleaning and cleaning and cleaning.  This is truly a labor of love so don't attempt it unless you really, really want to do it.  I don't oxidize allot of sterling, I spent too much time over the years cleaning my silver, so intentionally tarnishing it is mentally very hard for me to do.  I have read that if you are doing both metals to do your silver first and then do your copper.  I have also read that you can get some great colors like with a torch by putting the copper in a 300 degree oven for a few hours.  Haven't tried that yet, but I will. I do not use a torch - I have this vision of me, in the garage, torch in hand...and the house in flames...I don't even flame creme brulee, so my copper is going to have to wait.

I think that I have tried every lacquer on the market and have not been happy with the results - I've even gone the renaisannce wax route and John bougth a product that was quaranteed for like 27 years on outside cupola's - that other than costing allot did not do the job.  I was using nothing for a while and then I tried  an artist's fixative....meanwhile, I read about a new product in an article by Connie Fox which the jury is still out on...but I will let you know if it works as well as I hope. If the product is half as good as the company is in it's attention to detail, it will be a winner.

The Wire Leads - I Just Follow

My first love, making jewelry, has always been bending wire. I love how capricious it all is.  I love that you can have an idea of where you want to go - and how you can end up in an entirely different destination. This piece started life as a large coil and I really didn't like where we were going - so I started bending and twisting  

and I ended up with this interesting piece, which I then oxidized and polished, added that turquoise bead and the chain, and we had a great necklace.  But, remember where I started - a coil, and the end result is certainly a far cry from a symetrical coil and that's why I love working with wire.

I have been so dissappointed with the majority of the retail shops that carry my work, that even though they "Oh" and "Ah" over my copper and silver work, they want traditional strung jewelry.  They all have different excuses for not carrying it. One tells me that their clients don't like copper. Another says that they don't like it. The only places that seem to be brave enough to carry it are the museum gift shops and the "artsy" shops as opposed to the high end boutiques. I have a new "artsy" shop that almost cleaned me out of copper and silver wire work, so I have been frantically creating as I have to visit one of my museum shops and all she wants is copper. This is a western museum and the director likes copper and silver because they are products of Arizona.  I intentionally created the piece below for her.  I knew that I wanted to combine the two metals,

but I had no idea how, what ,where or when. I started with heavy gauge wire and forged it so it was work hardened but still bendable.  I made a frame and the ends to hold the chain. then I added a couple more pieces of heavy wire and one not so heavy.  This front piece was begging to have silver coiled around it and it did come out very nicely, if I do say so myself.

I wish that metals had not gotten so expensive in the last few months.  I would love to do several of these pieces in sterling silver only, but they would be very expensive for my markets .  I use allot of wire on these puppies and I think that we would be way over $500.00 for an all silver piece.  It used to be that my silver and copper were about the same price because the copper took so much more time for forging, oxidizing and clean up. Silver just always seems to go faster, and shining it up is definitely faster, so the time used to equalize out with the more expensive silver, but not any more.  Silver has been relegated to an accent rather than the main show and I am really sorry that that happened.

As a side note here - this techno-tard is stuck as to why this is working this way when I type. It happened after I added the pictures and I just can't seem to get it fixed, so pardon the centered last lines of my paragraphs.

One of the other things that I love about wire is the colors you can end up with after oxidizing.  I am not a big orange person, so pure copper does not appeal to me...but the possibilities with a little liver of sulfur or heat are amazing and beautiful.  I love the tones on the two necklaces above and they are neutral enough to go with almost anything. You also have the opportunity to take copper to almost black in the background, like in this bracelet, or allot of black like this necklace.

Copper wire, your imagination, some pliers, strong fingers and some liver of sulfur and ammonia can take the artisan to some fantastic places which is only limited by how much wire that you want to use. I have no idea how much wire that I used in the above necklace, but I know that it was hundreds of feet. Just remember that you can't go where the wire doesn't want to go especially if you are working in the heavier gauges.  Have fun with the wire and I think that you will be very pleased with the results.  These pieces or close replicas will be available in my shop in the near future.