Elijah Petrick is learning how to bring the skill of jewelry smithing into the modern age. Petrick is the laser welder at Lisa’s Jewelry, owned by his aunt, Lisa Petrick, who has taken Elijah under her wing to teach him the trade.

“I have known him forever, so it is as much as a friendship and a kinship as it is having somebody else to carry some of the workload,” Lisa said. “When he first came in, I said, ‘You first learn how to use (the laser welder) and service it before you turn it on,’ and he did. He self-taught himself how to use it. You can go to school to learn anything, but when you learn it on your own, you don’t have all these preconceived notions.”

Elijah, in his 20s, has been working with his aunt for the past year.

“I came over, and my uncle and aunt showed me this laser welder that hasn’t been used in over a year, so I read the manual and started tinkering around with it, welding pennies and nickels,” Elijah said. “I eventually figured out what the different settings were on the laser welder. I have just kind of moved forward ever since. I do locksmithing with my uncle over at the shop next door, too. I am a jack-of-all-trades. I’m a smith.”

Elijah was born and raised in Port Hadlock, and he graduated from Chimacum High School in 2012.

“I was around Hadlock for a while, doing odd jobs,” he said. “After high school, I really didn’t have much welding experience, so I went to Olympia. I got a job at a welding shop, which gave me a chance as a shop boy, and they showed me how to weld. Over two years there, I helped them with all their projects, cutting steel. I ended up getting to apply a lot of knowledge, TIG (Tungsten Inert Gas) welding especially, and it allowed me to understand how the system works, because you basically have a tungsten rod with that. This is just a laser, and that foot pedal is replaced with a clicker. There are little differences, but all in all, it is pretty much the same, just on the microscopic level.”

Elijah mostly performs repair work for the shop’s customers.

“That is probably 70 to 80 percent of the stuff that I do,” he said.

Lisa said she’s grateful for the extra set of hands.

“The laser welder isn’t using solder to add things,” she said. “It is actually using the actual material, so when I go to size a platinum ring now, instead of having to put on my torch really hot, put on safety goggles, make a piece of palladium and weld it into the spot, I get it all ready, send it over there, and he uses pure platinum to weld the joint without anybody damaging their eyes.”

And use of the laser welder helps prevent damaging previous repairs on a piece, Lisa said.

Creating jewelry

When Elijah is not busy doing repair work, he crafts original pieces from a bucket of silver scraps his aunt donated for the cause.

“What looks like a whole bunch of scrap metal becomes jewelry,” she said.

One of the scraps that caught his eye was a 300-year-old piece of silverware he turned into a necklace.

“It is a double-spaced fork that I wear around my neck,” he said. “It was a super famous silver flatware design, and I have been wearing it ever since I made it.”

When crafting a new piece, Elijah said he starts simple.

“I try to get something that looks nice in the shape of a ring,” he said. “I am not super technical. I don’t use millimeter gauges at the moment. I just do free-form stuff. But what inspires me is I will find a design, and I will put stones next to it and (pick) whatever sort of catches my eye. I don’t have a whole gigantic customer base that comes in asking for custom work at the moment.”

That allows Elijah to craft pieces to his own tastes.

“A lot of the time it is mostly my personal flare,” he said. “I take them to Seattle or Port Townsend, and I will try to sell them, and every once in a while somebody will want one. It is cool to see someone really take a liking to something that you made. Even though you see every flaw in it, they just see this super awesome perfect ring.

“It is sort of like a chain reaction,” he added. “I see that, and it inspires me to get right back in there and make another one. It is cool.”

Elijah said this could turn into a lifelong career.

“It is really fulfilling, and it is really fun,” he said. “I get to apply all the fabrication stuff from the welding shop, but I get to add my own artistic flare, which makes unique pieces, and I don’t have to follow some little blueprint. The bolt goes here and three-sixteenths of an inch wide. I did that for a few years, and it was cool building stuff, but it is all cookie-cutter stuff. It is all prefabricated. You just cut and weld.”

Jewelry is less utilitarian and can be passed down from generation to generation, Elijah said.

“There is anniversary bands, wedding rings, birthstone rings,” he said. “Jewelry has always been one of those things that has been passed down through years to centuries. It is interesting to make pieces that some day, 50 years from now, someone will say, ‘Who made this?’”

Laser welding

Elijah said he enjoys using the laser welding machine because he has to look through a microscope to use it.

“Another fascination of mine is hunting (with) long-range precision,” he said. “It is the same sort of characteristic, because if you were to look through the microscope, it has crosshairs. When I line up a piece, I put the crosshairs on it, I take a breath, and it is done.”

Elijah said he is gentle and deliberate, especially when he adds filler wire.

“You get from a third of a second to a second and a half for the laser to liquidize that metal,” he said. “If you put your wire in there and it sticks, and you hit it again, and you are putting pressure on the wire it could (break). It is all about precision and understanding how that piece of metal is going to get molded in there while making sure your edges don’t get overlapped. A fair amount of metallurgy plays in to it.”

Elijah said he is beginning to better understand the characteristics of various precious metals such as gold, silver and platinum.

“The precious metals I work on definitely have different characteristics than steel or aluminum,” he said. “That plays a big part. It also helps when you have a master jeweler who has been working with it for 40-plus years.”

Petrick said she specializes in goldsmithing and platinum, and she knows each metal by touch.

“Gold testing, if someone comes in to sell, I can touch it and tell if it is gold or not gold,” she said. “It’s in the fingers. A little arthritic fingers, but in there nonetheless. If you want to tell the difference between platinum and white gold, you take a file and file it. Platinum is like filing butter. Its molecular structure is so much different that you can feel the difference.”

Lisa’s Jewelry is located at 99 Oak Bay Road in Port Hadlock. The shop provides jewelry and watch repairs and has for the past three decades made medallions and charms for the Rhododendron Festival royalty.