Amulet with magnetic clamp

I am a metal worker and I specialise in handicraft. You can find some of my work with step-by-step building instructions on my website (in Italian and English).

One of these pieces of art is an amulet whose cover is closed with a magnet. The beautiful pattern on the silver cover comes from a special casting technique: The liquid silver is poured into a casting form made of two sepia shells whose pattern it takes on. This technique is called "cuttlefish bone casting".

The cover is a piece of curved silver with a thin copper layer as an inner reinforcement. I drilled a hole in the middle of the cover and with a brazing solder I welded a piece of silver tube with a 6 mm diameter on it. Then I pushed a disc magnet S-06-02-N in the tube and tightened it on the top end so the magnet can't fall out anymore.

The bottom side of the amulet is the cut-out lid of a tin can. I created a brass border on the lid with rivets (see picture above).

The amulet cover also has a brass border, which fits right into the bottom side. When you put the two pieces together, the cover adheres to the iron bottom side.

I covered the magnet on the front side of the silver cover with a little bit of synthetic resin and pushed a copper "S" into the resin.

The cover can be taken off by lightly tapping the amulet on a table. If you have long enough finger nails, you can use them to open the amulet. If both methods don't work, you can hold the magnet against another magnetic item (scissor, knife, refrigerator, etc.), then the cover will cling to it and the secret of the amulet will be revealed.