Stage 2: Chain Linkage - When the Rolling Mill Quit, the Week Got Real

Last week the rolling mill quit ("quit" as in catastrophic and fatal failure), and the whole studio hit pause. When you’re in the business of make your own sheet, wire, and tubing from raw metal, there isn’t a real workaround—no mill means no material, and no material means no progress. So we did what you have to do: dug in, compared options fast, and turned it into an improvised road trip down to Ken’s Gems in Calgary. Back home, bolted in, and the shop could breathe again. It wasn’t a fun expense, but it also wasn’t optional. A rolling mill isn’t a “nice-to-have” tool. It’s the backbone of the jewelry studio.

Even with that disruption, I crossed a line I’ve been working toward for a while: I finished my first apprenticeship piece that’s actually jewelry you can wear—a jump-ring bracelet. It’s simple on purpose. No hiding behind design tricks. When you repeat a basic operation enough times, the truth shows up immediately: every jump ring that isn’t perfectly consistent announces itself. That’s the point. It’s humble work, but it demands attention, and it teaches fast.

I also kept pushing on chenier tubing—making tube from scratch instead of buying it ready-made. On paper it sounds straightforward: take a flat strip and turn it into a clean, round tube with predictable dimensions. In practice, it’s fussy. Everything has to line up: the strip, the edges, the forming, the roundness, the dimensions, and outside of the Jewellery Training Solutions (JTS) instructions, good guidance is surprisingly thin. The most useful help didn’t come from a YouTube video—it came from actual physical books. A slim Charles Lewton-Brain booklet on hinges and catches, and Alan Revere’s Professional Jewelry Making. Quiet resources, but timeless and solid. When the internet gets vague, hit the books.