[Jewelry making - Article 00087] - Re: [Orchid] Finishing Inside Rings

[Peter W . Rowe]

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    If you're dealing with cast, perhaps rough or textured interior
    surfaces such as one gets with waxes that have been hollowed out,
    perhaps with a small ball burr or the like, then that surface
    finishes very well with the magnetic pin type tumblers.  barring
    that, sandblast or beadblast also works very well. 

    For the actual interior surfaces of ring shanks, which normally get
    sanded and polished,  a couple products for the flex shaft come to
    mind. First, are the 3M diamond band sanders. These are sleeves that
    fit over a rubber ended expanding mandrel, with the type of 3M
    diamond abrasive that looks like lots of multiple little dots.
    Available in a wide range of grits. It use first a quite coarse one,
    200 something grit, I think, and then a 600 grit one after that. The
    bands, if used with a bit of lube (bur life works fine), last a long
    time, and remove metal significantly faster than other sanding drums
    or tools I've tried.20 

    If you're working silver or gold, then the fine surface from that
    fine sanding band will polish up just fine with standard buffing
    motor tools (felt fingers, etc.)  If you're working in platinum, it
    may save you yet more time to sand it finer yet, and I recently
    discovered an imported sanding drum that amounts to fine sandpaper
    wound on a mandrel.  Sounds conventional enough, but these are pre
    mounted, permanently, on their mandrel rather than the usual
    cartridge rolls..  Made in Japan, and they use a significantly
    thinner and finer paper abrasive than conventional abrasive rolls,
    so they run very smooth and true. Last a good long time too. As with
    normal cartridge rolls, you peel back the paper as it wears. But the
    really neat thing about them is in addition to more usual grits for
    cartridge rolls, you can get these things in even very very fine
    grits. I use the 400, 600 and 800 grits in particular. The 800 leaves
    a surface that you can take directly to rouge if you wish, even on
    platinum. Stuller carries them (the diamond sanding bands too). I
    think Gesswein does too, and others may as well. In time saved and
    better results, they're well worth the somewhat higher cost over
    cheaper abrasives.

    And the final little tip I'd pass along is regarding putting the
    final rouge finish on the insides of ring shanks. Many polishers use
    only the felt finger shaped buffs, and these work well enough.  But
    the things are rather easy to contaminate with coarser grit, and
    sometimes getting a perfect rouge polish, without faint scratches or
    drag marks, can be difficult on some pieces. One solution is to get
    one of the small mandrels, similar to the type used for the MK
    brushes, but that has a fine tapered threaded spindle on the end.
    This tapered spindle comes to a fine point, much finer than what's
    on most buffing machine tapered spindles to start with, so you can
    mount very small wheels on it. The one I've got has a wood hub, which
    then mounts on the main spindle of the buffing motor, but I've also
    seen them in plastic. Anyway, with these, you then can use the tiny
    little loose 1/2 inch muslin buffs that normally get mounted on a
    screw mandrel and used in the flex shaft. Use these with rouge on the
    main machine, and get to hold the ring properly in both hands while
    you buff, while not breathing in all the rouge from the flex shaft
    use. With these small buffs, unlike the finger shaped felt buffs, you
    can much more easily vary the direction of buffing a bit from side to
    side, avoiding drag lines, and the softer muslin won't give you as
    much trouble with scratching or the like. Works like a charm. Most
    polishers wouldn't normally consider the finish from a felt wheel,
    even with rouge, to be the final surface on an exterior face of a
    ring, finishing the surfaces with muslin or other softer rouge
    buffs. But many of these same polishers will struggle to get a good
    finish on the interior of a ring, not quite realizing that the tools
    are there to use the same muslin buff sequence on the inside of the
    ring as well. 

Hope that helps.
Peter Rowe

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