Fold form cuff and melting pennies

This is a copper fold form cuff that I made yesterday.  Hope you like it.

I've also been making some charms out of pennies.  I posted some info about pennies at the beginning of August here, including the fact that midway through 1982 they began to make pennies out of copper-plated zinc.  I use pre-1982 pennies for jewelry because they are made of copper.  Until now, I didn't really think about how a zinc penny would behave under a torch.  I suddenly got curious last night.

There are three pennies in this photo; an old one and two brand new 2011 pennies.  The older penny was in the flame a lot longer than the others, but it is just fine.   I didn't really expect the melt-down  but it turns out zinc has a very low melting point.  This only took about 15 seconds in the torch flame-- the zinc literally dripped out of the copper plating.  It was cool as hell.  However, don't try this at home... apparently zinc fumes are toxic (don't you love the way I do first and read later?)

Anyway, the next photo shows some of the pennies I made into charms.  This type of stuff can only be made with the older pennies because they can take the heat.

What will next Wednesday's post bring...?  You never know ;-)