And no, I’m not going to show it to you. There’s the tiniest black spot under the nail plate next to the cuticle that is obviously an eensy clot and the tip of the finger is a bit tender, but that’s about it. All in all, it could have been a lot worse.

And may I just say that trying to type with a band-aid over a fingertip is a royal PITA. I kept making I don’t know how many mistakes while I was working today, to the point where I finally yanked off the band-aid and went with a smaller one that just wrapped around the finger instead of going over the tip.

In other news I’m starting a commissioned piece that is going to be a number of firsts for me and has the potential to go dreadfully wrong. I’m building my first double gallery collet out of 16g square sterling wire, creating my first V prongs, and then I have to solder everything together without melting anything or causing any parts to drop off (because why make things difficult for myself when I can make them really, REALLY difficult).

That being said, I am going to order myself some investment (the super-fine Plaster of Paris-like mixture that can take very high temps and is used when casting fine jewelry) so that I can use a technique where I position setting parts on some plasticine, set up a barrier around them, pour investment over them, and when the investment is bone dry pull off the plasticine and solder the underside of the parts together. It’s a lot easier than shoving prongs into a soft charcoal block and praying that they stay in place while I solder them to a collet.

Or I can just buy some Hold It soldering clay. I dunno. But I do know there are easier ways to put together small, complex setting parts than the way I’ve been doing it.