Since March, I have been working on a totally new piece. As my final project for City and Guilds Structured Jewellery level 3, I've made a pair of functional optical frames for prescription lenses, inspired by radio masts.
I have wanted for some time to make an object of function that is worn as the requirements are very different to those that are merely decorative. Primarily, they needed to suit my face and be comfortable - the weight being a significant design concern. Optics seemed at first to be a very closed world. No accessible insights into the tools of the trade/conventions of practice seemed available. I felt my way, frustratedly googling every glasses-making phrase I could conjure. Gradually I found crumbs of knowledge through youtube videos, dissecting existing specs, downloading and reading optical supplies catalogues and searching out jewellers who make glasses (few and far between). I was very grateful initially for the Facebook group 'eyejam', set up by New Zealand based jeweller and self taught spectacle maker Brian Adam for helping demystify the initial principles and protocols in the fabrication of bespoke specs.
There are many options available to the handcrafter looking to fabricate their own frames, glazing labs can work around more tenuous ergonomics than you might expect! I was very lucky to find an independent Optician willing to advise me along the way, thank you graciously to C.E.Hall in Surrey.
After a bit of sketching from some photos I took of radio mast construction, I began testing out related, simple geometric frame shapes on my face. I settled on a half round arched brow line with contrasting cross bar in flat strips of Sterling and Reflections silver.
Alport Heights radio mast Silver frame components
My difficulties came with the side tabs that hold the handmade hinges. These define the pantoscopic tilt of the glasses when worn and also need to provide a solid grounding for the hinge and temple movement. A logistical challenge on paper rendered a logistical nightmare in silversmithing! Keeping the hinge tubes aligned (shown between the brass tabs in the image below) is more complex than I could ever have fathomed and my resultant solution is simply never to make a precisely engineered object with angles on too many planes again!
Soldering the tabs to the silver crossbar
Tapping the hinge rod holes for the temples to screw into
I dealt with the obstacle of connecting steel to brass by threading the steel arms so that they screw into the brass hinge rod and fixing with some loctite. This hasn't proved to be an ideal solution as wear will cause loosening and movement of the temples. Still, it's a nice mechanical feature.
The specs were furnished with glass nosepads, gunmetal nuts and bolts and rectangles I cut and polished up from a block of pen turning plastic.
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Rear view: Steel arms screw into brass rods held within silver tubes
