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Jewelers spend hours fixing damage that they themselves did to the metal. Soft hammers and shaping tools limit the injuries to the metal being worked, with the best quality of all (the least damage to metal while still shaping it) being paper mallets. Leather however remains tried and true as material for making mallets from.... (2004) Complete Story
This vulcaniser came to me in a poor condition. It would not heat up and had seized because of corrosion. The bodywork around the base was also badly corroded and needed treatment. Having decided this would be a worthwhile restoration, I began researching the makers and identified them as.... (2003) Complete Story
Polariscopes are a very useful, simple and inexpensive to make piece of gemological equipment. They are used to tell glass from gem materials synthetic spinel from all other materials, singly refractive from doubly refractive, crystaline from cryptocrystaline material, doublets and triplets from other gems.... (1997) Complete Story
BW Simon in Spartanburg, South Carolina, made this handy tool for finishing jewelry. I would like to thank him for allowing me to share this bench trick with you.... (2006) Complete Story
There are two properties which distinguish a good tool from a bad one. The tool must have the correct shape for the work which it is to do, and the tool must be hard enough to last a long time. This class will teach you to make tools hard enough to last without being so hard that they are too brittle and break. Tool steel has three different states: annealed, hardened and tempered. New steel comes annealed; the steel is as soft and workable as it gets. Hardened steel is just the opposite, as hard as it gets. Fully hardened steel is not useful as it is so hard that it will break if struck (it is brittle). Tempering is the process of removing some of the hardness. Tempering trades off toughness against hardness.... (2005) Complete Story
