Where everything starts. A printout of the coyote gets glued onto sterling silver with rubber cement, then cut out very carefully with a jeweler’s saw

Once the shape is roughed out, I use various needle files to refine the shape further, then polish with jeweler’s rouge to smooth off any sharp edges or burrs.

The final coyote shape in sterling silver, placed against a 1″ round of red brass to see how the final piece will look.

Then I get to play with fire. The underside of the coyote piece and the topside of the moon were coated with flux, which was then fired (this prevents soot from building up between the layers and preventing a clean bond with the solder). I cut off and heated three balls of easy silver solder, put them onto the back side of the coyote, turned it over and put it onto the moon, and heated everything until the solder melted and bonded the two pieces. The pendant is now in the pickle pot having firescale and residual gunk removed.

The final product, clean and shiny! The smudges on the coyote’s body are my fingerprints.