[Jewelry making - Article 00009] - Re: [Orchid] Appropriate gauge for flush setting

[Peter W . Rowe]

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>     Then I've heard some various ways of pushing the metal, but my
>     friend Jimmy makes a tool out of an old bur with a point on the end
>     at around a 45 degree angle, puts into a handle, and pushes HARD
>     down on the stone while moving around in a circle, seating the
>     stone and making a perfectly burnished round edge around the stone. 

    I do it a little differently, though not by much. First, my
    burnishing tools aren't old drills. They dull too quick. I make mine
    from either 1/8 inch or 1/16 inch carbide rod (blank tools from
    cutting tools suppliers. Bits and Bits carries the blanks). I grind
    the ends to a slim "bullet" shape, coming to not quite a sharp
    point. High polish with diamond compound (lapidary equipment makes
    this easy, or the ceramic lap with diamond compound on a power hone
    is also easy. Without that, you can make a small wood disk shaped
    lap, about an inch in diameter, that will fit a screw mandrel for
    your flex shaft, and charge that with diamond compound. slower, but
    works too. In all cases, the tool is held for grinding and polishing
    in a #30 handpiece, which I allow to spin as the bit contacts the lap
    or polishing wheel, so the point is truely symmetrical. Plus, it's
    fast to do. Anyway, the whole bullet point is highly polished, except
    the tip is cut flat. The purpose of that is so the contact area with
    the metal is a tad wider, so the burnished surface stays smoother,
    and the contact of the burnisher with the stone, if any, is not such
    a sharp point, which can damage softer stones (anything but diamond),
    as well as chipping the point of the burnisher. 

    Anyway, with that burnisher (the thin one I use the most, is held in
    a pin vise, the larger one in a millegrain tool handle), I don't
    just point the tip at the stone straight down and go around. I start
    with the burnisher laid back a bit, so it's contacting the metal at
    about a 30 degree angle, a bit shallower than John's description will
    yield. Doing it this way means I do have to rotate the workpiece,
    which is a bit clumsier than simply going around with the burnisher,
    but the effect of this is that the metal being burnished moves down
    towards the stone, not so much back and away. After going around
    once at this shallower angle, I go around again, with the burnisher
    held at about a 45 degree contact angle, till the metal edge being
    pushed over nicely contacts the stone. The result is a bright smooth
    reflective edge tightly holding the stone, and because I started a
    little shallower, there's little if any burr thrown up on the
    surface, plus I can control better how much metal actually comes over
    the stone. The carbide burnishers take and keep a higher polish than
    does steel, and especially when working on platinum, they offer less
    friction and a higher polish on the finished metal. Try it. You'll
    like it. they're not hard to make, and work a LOT better than steel,
    even with golds. And for platinum work, it then doubles as a good
    tool to have on the bench when you need to address the occasional bit
    of porosity. The 1/8 inch diameter larger one gets most of that duty
    on my bench. The smaller one also finds use in polishing up tiny
    details that are hard to reach with anything else. 

    I should also mention that for me, magnification is crucial. A long
    time ago, I got in the habit of doing a lot of work with a 10x
    corrected eye loupe. Same hastings type lens used for diamond
    grading, I get it in the B&L eye loupe form. They don't come with a
    head spring, so I have to make one. I cut a hole in the side of the
    loupe so when it's over my eye, I have the option of looking to the
    side of the lens, giving me normal binocular vision that way, or
    through the lens which is single eye at 10x. With that, I can easily
    see just where the burnisher is, and that makes it possible to do
    this safely with even colored stones, since I can keep the tip of
    the burnisher from actually touching the stone (which the carbide
    would scratch). In the case of colored stones, I finish it with a
    mild steel burnisher for the final go around, tucking the metal as
    close to the stone as reasonable, since the mild steel is less likely
    to scratch the stone, and with colored stones, I don't try to get
    perfect contact of the burnished surface down to the stone, at least
    not with the usual small sizes. Note too, that with colored stones,
    especially anything other than corundum, you can't so much just
    press the stones into a tapered hole to fit the seat. So then I too
    use a hart bur. I find it takes me longer to then burnish down the
    edge properly when the seat is cut with a hart bur, so John's
    "laziness" in using it doesn't seem to speed things up for me, at
    least, illustrating that everyone has their own favorite way to do a
    thing... 

    A couple years ago, I treated my aging eyes to a setting microscope.
    Nice and clear, now that the vision is binocular. But with the
    scope, I have to work harder to keep the work at the focal point of
    the scope as I work and rotate the work, so it ends up slower, if
    more precise. So I often still just use my familiar eye loupe
    version... 

Peter
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