Fantasy Inspired Pendant With USB Drive

I like jewellery with meaning and even more so - with function! Also being a fan of fantasy genre I decided to merge the elegancy of elvish patterns with functionality of a USB drive.

This instructable is to walk you through the entire process of crafting a sterling silver fantasy USB pendant.

There is nothing rocket science about the process and most of the tools are available in home iprovement store.

For this project you must have:

• a small USB drive (I used GoodRam 64GB UPI2)
• sterling silver wire 1.0 and 1.2 mm thick
• silver solder medium and easy
• silver soldering flux
• soldering block
• gas torch reaching at least 750 C (I use Dremel 2200)
• solder pick
• silver pickle (I use citrine acid)
• bunch of files
• sand paper (mainly 800, 1500 grit)
• engraver with burrs (I use Dremel Micro)
• pliers
• cutters
• tweezers
• small hammer
• vise
• thin steel wire
• sharpie
• epoxy glue

[Optional]

• polishing machine (I use a rotary tumbler with steel shot)
• stone or mineral - if you would like to decorate your pendant

As an admirer of the fantasy worlds like LOTR, Witcher and Skyrim I aimed to create a pendant that would feel out of this world. After few pages of sketches I selected the one I feel connected with the most.

The overall idea is to make this pendant in 2 parts: a main upper frame and a detachable lower frame with a USB drive.

The core of the pendant will be a USB drive. I chose a GoodRam UPI2 because of its rigid design. After removing the plastic parts you got a clean full metal USB stick with little grip bumps on the sides.

First of all the USB drive needs some casing to be a part of the pendant. It is just a small box which will hold the YSB drive firmly by its grip bumps and some glue.

To build this basket I use 1.0mm wire. I cut 4 for pieces 36mm length and marked 4 bending points with sharpie. To simplify the process a bit a hold all 4 wires together and carve grooves using a square file. These grooves will make it much easier to bend the wires into rectagular rings.

Once the rings are bent into the rectangular rings it is time for the first soldering. I place the rings on the soldering blocks and apply flux on the joints as well as on the corner points. At this step I use medium solder to close the rings and reinforce the corners.

The next step is to attach these 4 rings on top of each other to form a hollow basket. Since they are made out of a round wire it is a good idea to grind them a bit in order to have more flat surface to make the connection stronger. I lay a sheet of 800 emery paper on my desk and grind all the rings a little to get some flat surface.

I stack 4 rings together and use some steel wire to hold them in place. Heated up with the torch I user solder pick to apply some medium solder to the joints between the rings.

The last piece of the basket is the lid. I just cut 6 pieces of the same 1mm wire to match the lenght of the hollow basket. Then I soldered them together to form a somewhat flat cap. You might as well saw the rectangular lid out of silver sheet.

In the end of this step the lid is soldered to the hollow basket. Remember to flatten the lid and file the basket endges for a stronger joint. Once the soldering is done we have a nice silver basket where the USB drive should fit. I recommend trying it with side without the bumps, otherwise you would have a hard time taking it apart. Don't worry if the basket is too tight or too loosen - it will be fixed later on when installing the USB drive into the basket.

The lower frame of the pendat is the decorative part which will be detacheable form the main upper frame. The decorative structure consists of one central piece made of 1.2mm wire and two identical outer pieces made with 1.0mm wire. All three pieces will have a common pointy joint at the very bottom and six connection points to the USB basket on the opposite side.

I mainly use pliers and cutters to cut and bend wires into the shape following the design sketch. Once all 3 decoration pieces are ready I solder them together by their pointy parts. It is important to join these pieces only at the pointy part so that it is possible to spread them wide enough to attach to the USB basket. In order to not solder the piece where they shouldn't be I used a piece of scrap silver as a separator.

It is time to complete the lower part of the pendant. The lower frame will be soldered to USB basket in 6 connection points: 4 corner points and 2 on the center od the basket lid.

First I mark where the connection points will be on the basket lid as they must be slightly grinded to ensure a strong joinery. I use my engraver with a round burr to carve two small dimples 4 mm from each side at the center line. I also file a bit from each corner of the USB basket to make soldering easier.

The central decorative piece is getting soldered first as it will serve as a stem for the whole frame. I use tweezers to hold the decoration frame on top of the USB basket. It takes a while to bend wires to make them fit tightly to the dimples I made earlier. I still use medium solder for the central peice connection.

Once the central piece is soldered to the basket it is easier to maneuver the outer decoration pieces to fit the corners of the USB basket. I use steel wire to hold them in place while soldering. Since these are made with thinner wire I use easy solder to ensure the wires and the exisitng joints do not melt.

The last step for the lower part is to add clasp bumps on each side of the USB basket. These bumps (lack of a better word) are just silver spheres where the "figure 8 calsps" will click on to hold the lower frame. So I use 2 simlar piece of 1mm wire about 12 mm each and melt them with my torch. The surface tension force dose the magic and turn them into an almost perfect silver balls.

I mark the middle of the basket on each side and carve out dimples to place the balls. Then I use tweezers to hold the entire frame on the side and place a silver ball into the dimple. It is a good idea to put some extra flux and use a larger chunk of easy solder before applying the heat. This way solder will distribute itself evenly and the joint will ba strong.

The same operation is done on the other side of the USB basket attaching a second silver ball. Once all the soldering is done the lower frame takes a hot citric acid bath to remove the firescale.

The upper frame basically consists of two identical elements on the back and front sides. A side itself is just a fusion of 2 triangles - a larger and a smaller one. Hence, in total there are 4 triangles to be crafted separately and then joined together.

I start with a larger triangle. I cut a piece of 1.2mm wire for a single side of a large triangle as per the sketch. Then I use this piece as a template to cut another 5 pieces of the same length to get 6 in total, 3 for each large triangle.

It is very important to grind off a tip of each wire to simplify soldering. The point here is to maximise the surface two pieces of wire will connect to each other. So I preapred all 6 piece of wire and soldered them in pairs to form 2 large triangles.

The process is similar for the smaller triangles. The difference is that the lower side of the triangle is smaller and I use 1mm wire this time. Again, make sure to grind the tips either with engraver or a flat file, otherwise the joint won't be as good.

Once there are four triangles it is time to merge them into two. I place smaller triangle on top of the larger one and mark the points of where they interlay. Then I use a fine burr to cut grooves in the larger triangles so the smaller one could sink in them. When the triangles are lined up it is time to reinforce the interlaying points with medium solder.

The result of this step is two star-ish flat wireframes.

Until now the main frame is just a couple of flat wireframes. It is time to go 3D to make room for a USB drive to penetrate into. The idea is to have back and front sides of the upper frame on top of each other with some space in between.

The trick here is to connect the central tips of the wireframes with a 1mm piece of wire about 30mm long. Bending this wire will make it possible to align wireframes on top of each other ensuring enough space for USB drive in between.

To make sure the USB drive can sit comfortable inside the upper frame I decided to add a cage. This cage is made with 4 rectangular rings identical to the ones I made a USB basket with.

The culmination point of the upper frame assembly is aligning the wireframes, adding the USB cage and soldering all of these toghether. There are multiple connection points and it is important to solder each one of them to ensure stiffness of the pendant. I use a lot of steel wire to hold all the pieces together while soldering. It also helps to protect already existing joints from the heat.

At this point there are 2 parts of the pendant ready but with no way to hold on to each other. The mechanism to hold them together will be based on standard bracelet clasps, a.k.a. "figure 8 safety clasp".

First of all I need a hinge on each side of the upper frame where the clasp will be attached to. I also need a piece of wire to attach a hinge to. So I just cut a piece of 1.2mm wire and solder it where the large triangle intersects with USB cage. Same operation is done on the other side of the upper frame.

At this point I thought that it would look better if I join the tips of the back and front large triangles together on both sides. It does look much nicer indeed.

To make a hinge I take a piece of 1.2mm wire anneal it and flatten it out with a hammer on a tiny anvil. Then I use another piece of 1.2mm wire to wrap the flattened wire around to form a little loop. This loop is then goes to the spot I prepared for the hinges on the upper frame.

The end of this step is almost assembled pendant ready for clasps to be added.

Since the most of the soldering is done it is time for polishing. There are many ways to polish a piece of jewellery but in this case I use a rotary tumbler. This is jsut a barrel with tiny steel balls that lightly hit the silver piece hunderd of times with each rotation. I usually run the tumbler for an hour and the result always astonishes me.

Not only the tumbling polishes off the imperfections on th silver piece, it also make it stronger by a process called work hardening. Taken out of the tumbler the pendant is ready for some hand polishing, adding clasps and setting the USB drive.

Only when all the heavy operations like soldering and tumbling are done it is safe to set our USB drive into the basket. I use a tiny bit of two component epoxy glue to fill the basket and place the USB drive inside.

In case if the drive does not fit in the basket I use engraver to grind its internal walls to make more room. I always check the fittness by inserting the fron side of the drive into the basket. If it goes in smoothly then it is good to be set with a glue.

The clasp is just a wire loop curved in a way to click on the bump. I cut about 70mm of a 1mm wire and form a U-shape. Then it goes into the clasp hinge I attached earlier to the upper frame. While on the hinge I use pliers to bend the clasp wire in a kind of 8-shape pattern to give it some flexibility to be able to click onto the bumb on the USB frame.

I intentionally leave a longer tail on the clasps to give them a final bend contouring the decorative elements of the USB frame. In order to complete the clasp I solder the tail together with an easy solder and throw the entire upper frame into a citric bath.

With the clasps in place I could consider that the pendant is completed. But something was kinda missing. Since this is a jewellery piece I decided to add a gemstone - a beautiful square black onyx.

The only possible option to atatche a stone I see here is a prongs setting. This is one of the simplest yet trickiest setting option. So I mark 4 spots where the prongs will be attached to. The prongs will hold some load so the spots for them are selected where frame wires intersecting to add strength.

I used engraver to grind the spots a bit to ensure good joints. Then a took 2 pieces of 1mm wire and bent them in a horseshoe manner. This way it is easier to solder the prongs.

Once soldered I cut off the top arching parts of the horseshoe shaped additions and file the tips to smooth them out. THe last accord is to put the stone in its place and gently bend the tips of the prongs so they embrace the onyx tightly.

When the stone is set the only thing left to do is to wash the pendant with a toothbruch is a soapy water, rinse it and wipe it dry to make sure that moisture would not neither damage silver wires nor the USB drive inside it.