Cold Forging vs Annealing & Forging Silver

[brad]

Looking ahead I want to do some forging of cuffs and a belt buckle from 2 ga, 1/4"-ish round silver wire.  I used to do a bit of blacksmithing with heavy hammers and iron/steel.  and a furnace.   But I did not do decorative pieces.  I gave it up due to age, shoulders getting sore, and that awful "blacksmiths" elbow.  
    But would like to see if body can tolerate smaller work  with silver?  I watch videos of guys slugging it out on a piece with cold forging, without ever annealing.  And I think, so does that just save annealing and pickling time, and expense?  
    I would like to hear your comments on differences and preferences, experiences.

Brad

[brad]

In a reply to self....
I found in forging my recently shown silver belt buckle, that I choose to anneal many times to avoid any possible cracking of the silver and my arm. I used the heavy dead blow hammer to flatten the wire that would become the sides of the buckle, and also the front of it just a bit. Then I annealed again and switch to a lighter ball peen hammer to flatten and shape the front more, then anneal again to turn each leg of the buckle up. annealed a couple of more times while final shaping and texturing. So really not much different than if I were using wrought iron and my forge. Heat quench, hammer, repeat, repeat, etc.

[Irith-Rita]

Brad, You did right to anneal it every time before forging. I even anneal simple Sterling siver band rings before hammering to avoid cracking the silver.