[Jewelry making - Article 00097] - Re: [Orchid] To quench or not to quench, that is the question

[John Donivan]

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>     I'm sorry my question and subsequent answers have bored you so much 

    Helen, I already apologized in another post and said that my comments
    weren't directed at you, specifically, and some other things. I
    always remember that there are - how many now? I looked it up -
    Orchid gets 240,000 unique visitors a month - something like 8500
    members. There are jewelers who only solder settings on shanks, there
    are setters who only set, and various other tasks. For the general
    worker, though - someone like me - annealing is the one task that we
    will do the most times in our careers. I've probably annealed
    something literally about a million times. I made a pendant bale
    today and stamped it 14k before I bent it. That meant that it needed
    annealing before bending, just for the stamp. Hammer, anneal, roll,
    anneal, bend, anneal, punch, anneal, round, anneal, straighten,
    anneal. It's the most common task in metals, most likely, and the
    whole point I've been trying to get to is that it is just not
    complicated and there's no reason to make it so. It's interesting and
    useful to understand what's happening. It's also interesting to know
    how a refiner does it to 10,000 ounces at a time, but really what it
    boils down to is that you, the bench worker, likely has an inch of
    hard wire that needs to be made soft. And if you warm it to around
    900F it will become soft - no muss, no fuss. My frustration is in no
    way with you, it's with the tangents - well, but the ideal way is to
    use a $5,000 annealing kiln, or use laser pumped kryptonite
    pyrometers. For one inch of silver wire? Huh? Ok, if someone wants
    to, or runs 10,000 ounces or big billets or has a bucket of cash in
    the back. But those people already know how to do that - it's their
    business. Almost everybody, almost every day, has to soften one inch
    of silver wire - soften the tips of wires they pounded on - ring
    shanks, on and on. Simple, everyday tasks. And you just heat it, and
    it's soft. No muss, no fuss. 

http://www.donivanandmaggiora.com
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