Did I really want to be a Jeweler?
As a kid I thought I would like to be an Artist. I loved to draw and paint couldn't really think of doing anything else. Funny how when we grow up we sometimes are pushed away from our dreams. Yet I returned after many years of absence.
Exposed to jewelry making in High School I carved a few rings in wax and helped cast them. Being exposed to the process of jewelry making early in my life had a huge impact on me. The idea of making a wax object and then making an investment mold of it. Burning out the wax in a small kiln and casting. Lighting the large torch to melt the metal in the crucible, see it in a liquid state and then releasing the pin on the centrigfuge casting machine. Watching the flask spin round and round knowing any minute would be the reveal. Then final plunge of the hot flask into water to reveal a now metal form of what I had made in the wax.
The hand tools, files, polishing motors intreged me even more. Could I get a mirror finish on my ring? Yes, I think I always wanted to be Jewelry Artist.