A sneak peek into the workshop – saw piercing

A few months ago, we told you all about saw blades – jewellery tools that are used for a technique called saw piercing (read the article here).

This month, we wanted to share one of our latest commissions that Matthew has just finished using saw piercing to achieve the beautiful design that Nicholas drew for our customer. Saw piercing was the only way to achieve the open spaces in between all of the curved lines of metal that create this Hamsa hand pendant.

Watch the video below to see how Matthew uses the saw blade to cut out the shapes…

As you can see from the video, Matthew uses very even up-and-down saw strokes to saw pierce out the shapes and he also uses a very even pressure as he cuts the metal. Uneven pressure can cause the saw blade to break (which they often do) and create an uneven finish on the metal.

This is what the pendant looked like after Matthew had completed the saw piercing work.

There were many more techniques used to create this beautiful pendant including hand making bezel settings for a pear cut emerald and three round diamonds, hand filing some solid metal ‘diamond’ shapes, and soldering everything together. All of these techniques were used to create the beautiful finished pendant however the open design could not have been so beautifully executed without saw piercing.