Look at that TOOTH!

A young girl found this shark tooth on the Oregon coast! (I didn’t know we had sharks that big…gulp)

She wanted to turn the shark tooth into a pendant for her dad. I was happy to oblige!

Instead of drilling through the tooth and looping it that way, we decided to make a custom bezel or cap instead.

I started by wrapping silver stock around the top of the tooth and bending it to mimic the shape of the tooth.

Wrapping the tooth. The great thing about silver is that it’s soft and can move where you want it to.

After the silver was wrapped tightly around the tooth, I took a jewelers saw and cut where needed. The ends were brought together closely and soldered in place.

There are 3 pieces to this cap:

The original loop around the tooth, a piece of silver cut to shape that lays on top (like a roof!) and soldered into place, and lastly a loop or “bail” added on the top surface for the chain to go through.

Soldering the bail into place.

Silver takes a lot of heat before the solder flows, so I came in with a very hot flame.

After all the pieces are soldered together, the cap is taken to the polishing machine to remove all of the discoloration and to give it a high polish.

The tooth will then be inserted into the cap, and the bottom cap edges will be pushed down to put pressure on the tooth. While generally not needed, I added a dap of two part epoxy for extra security.

The finished result! I was happy with how this turned out.

While it might not be everyone’s style to wear a large shark tooth as a pendant, I certainly can appreciate the sentimentality of it all…to me that’s one of the best parts of goldsmithing!

I still can’t believe this was found on the Oregon Coast. Maybe I’m just naive.

Regardless, this was a really cool find! 

M O D E R N  G O L D S M I T H

Thanks for reading! Here are some other fun projects I’m working on!