In every aspect of their work they had been professional. Surveying their jewelry, cards, and display, they could see no indication of the amateur. Why should there be? Frank Frink thought. We’re both pros; not in jewelry making, but in shopwork in general.
The display boards held a good variety. Cuff bracelets made of brass, copper, bronze, and even hot-forged black iron. Pendants, mostly of brass, with a little silver ornamentation. Earrings of silver. Pins of silver or brass. The silver had cost them a good deal; even silver solder had set them back. They had bought a few semiprecious stones, too, for mounting in the pins: baroque pearls, spinneis, jade, slivers of fire opal. And, if things went well, they would try gold and possibly five– or six-point diamonds.
It was gold that would make them a real profit. They had already begun searching into sources of scrap gold, melted-down antique pieces of no artistic value—much cheaper to buy than new gold. But even so, an enormous expense was involved. And yet, one gold pin sold would bring more than forty brass pins. They could get almost any price on the retail market for a really well-designed and executed gold pin… assuming, as Frink had pointed out, that their stuff went over at all.
At this point they had not yet tried to sell. They had solved what seemed to be their basic technical problems; they had their bench with motors, flex-cable machine, arbor of grinding and polishing wheels. They had in fact a complete range of finishing tools, ranging from the coarse wire brushes through brass brushes and Cratex wheels, to finer polishing buffs of cotton, linen, leather, chamois, which could be coated with compounds ranging from emery and pumice to the most delicate rouges. And of course they had their oxyacetylene welding outfit, their tanks, gauges, hoses, tips, masks.
And superb jewelers’ tools. Pliers from Germany and France, micrometers, diamond drills, saws, tongs, tweezers, third-hand structures for soldering, vises, polishing cloths, shears, hand-forged tiny hammers… rows of precision equipment. And their supplies of brazing rod of various gauge, sheet metal, pin backs, links, earring clipbacks. Well over half the two thousand dollars had been spent; they had in their Edfrank bank account only two hundred and fifty dollars, now. But they were set up legally; they even had their PSA permits. Nothing remained but to sell.
No retailer, Frink thought as he studied the displays, can give these a tougher inspection than we have. They certainly looked good, these few select pieces, each painstakingly gone over for bad welds, rough or sharp edges, spots of fire color … their quality control was excellent. The slightest dullness or wire brush scratch had been enough reason to return a piece to the shop. We can’t afford to show any crude or unfinished work; one unnoticed black speck on a silver necklace—and we’re finished.
On their list, Robert Childan’s store appeared first. But only Ed could go there; Childan would certainly remember Frank Frink.
“You got to do most of the actual selling,” Ed said, but he was resigned to approaching Childan himself; he had bought a good suit, new tie, white shirt, to make the right impression. Nonetheless, he looked ill-at-ease. “I know we’re good,” he said for the millionth time. “But—hell.”
Most of the pieces were abstract, whirls of wire, loops, designs which to some extent the molten metals had taken on their own. Some had a spider-web delicacy, an airiness; others had a massive, powerful, almost barbaric heaviness. There was an amazing range of shape, considering how few pieces lay on the velvet trays; and yet one store, Frink realized, could buy everything we have laid out here. We’ll see each store once—if we fail. But if we succeed, if we get them to carry our line, we’ll be going back to refill orders the rest of our lives.