Even with a wonderful family, an interesting job and good friends, my life is not complete without a shop. I've always liked working with my hands and after moving to California have discovered the joys of working with jewelry and lapidary.

I get a tremendous satisfaction in being able to complete the whole process - from finding a nice piece of stone while out rockhounding in the desert, to cutting and polishing a cabochon from it in the lapidary shop, and finally fabricating or casting a piece of silver or gold jewelry to show off the stone in a good way. Working with and incorporating different materials like silver, exotic woods, meteorite, fossil ivory, and Damascus steel is as fun as it is challenging.

Since 2002 I've been able to teach these skills to others in Los Angeles and Santa Monica, CA. The subject matter runs the full gamut from beginner level soldering and stone setting to advanced topics like hinges, hollow-form construction, granulation, vacuum casting, Keum-Boo, filigree, bone carving, fold forming, and stone or metal inlay.

To help students learn better techniques for solving common problems, improving quality, and saving time, I documented a series of jewelry making bench tips and have enjoyed sharing them with others. This led to the publication of Bench Tips for Jewelry Making on Amazon. It has been well received, even placing #1 Best Seller in the Jewelry Craft category a couple times in in 2014 and 2015.

Contact: BradSmithJewelry@yahoo.com