[Jewelry making - Article 00707] - Re: [Orchid] Cleaning jeweler's hands

[Peter W . Rowe]

========[ Invite a Friend - http://www.ganoksin.com/invite.htm  ]========

Brenda,

>     I have the same problem but now I wear leather gloves purchased in
>     the gardening section (about $5). These fit snugly and also protect
>     your hands from hot metal due to friction on the wheel. 
>     For heaven's sake please do not wear gloves while polishing!
>     Losing a finger is simply not worth the discomfort of the heat and
>     mess. If gloves were the answer, this topic would not even be
>     discussed. 

    Let me second Jon's admonition. In my varied career over the past 35
    years or so, I've seen and experienced my fair share of various
    mishaps and accidents. 

    Most are the usual minor burns, scrapes, poked fingers, and the
    like. A few were serious. With the exception of two guys I know who
    removed bits of their fingers with a power punch press when they
    removed the safety switches intended to prevent such accidents, all
    of the rest of the serious accidents involved buffing motors. Most of
    these involved improper choices as to how to hold the work in various
    ways, and this includes gloves. Gloves were, in fact, responsible for
    the worst of all these accidents, when a somewhat inexperienced new
    polisher had his entire index finger torn from his hand when the
    jewelry caught in the buff, and the glove got trapped between jewelry
    and wheel, yanking it, and the enclosed finger, away. 

    If you must use the gloves, use them right. That means removing most
    of the glove by cutting off the leather finger tips, leaving a tip
    long enough to cover the end of the finger to about half way between
    the last and middle knuckle. You use only the leather finger tips.
    That's enough so they won't fall off, and will protect your fingers
    from the heat, yet is still short enough so if it gets caught, it
    will pull from your hand without taking the finger with it. You can
    buy such leather finger cots already prepared, by the way, saving
    having to disect your gloves yourself. 

    But even these are not always the best, since although you won't
    likely injure yourself using these, you also cannot really grip the
    work as well as you can without them, and that sometimes means work
    getting caught in the wheel and damaged, even if your fingers are
    mostly OK. 

    Much better than covering your precise and sensative gripping tools
    (your fingers) with a leather finger cot, is finding ways to hold the
    jewelry itself. Rings can be held for polishing the insides, with a
    strip of heavy leather wrapped as a C shape around the ring. You hold
    the leather from the outside, and use it to grip the ring. belt
    weight leather not only can grip tight, but is thick enough to not
    only stop most rings that get away from you and spin on the finger
    buff, but will keep that spinning ring from hitting you too. Rings
    can also be put on a tapered wood mandrel to polish the ouside, and
    many items can have little "nests" made of wood to cradle them for
    polishing. Thats useful when you have many of a single item to
    polish. The few minutes you spend making a "nexs" (just heat one item
    up and burn it into the wood to create a cradle for the shape) gets
    paid back quickly in the time spent polishing. 

    The easiest way, though, to deal with heating pieces is to polish
    more than one piece at a time. If one starts to get toasty, set it
    down and work on the other. Items can be quickly cooled if placed in
    the air stream of the dust collector's suction port. 

cheers
Peter
____________________________________________________________________
T h e   O r c h i d   L i s t
Open Electronic Forum for Jewelry Manufacturing Methods and Procedures
____________________________________________________________________
Orchid FAQ:
~ http://www.ganoksin.com/orchid/faq.htm
Orchid Archives:
~ http://www.ganoksin.com/orchid/archive
Orchid Galleries:
~ http://www.ganoksin.com/orchid/gallery.htm
Invite a Friend:
~ http://www.ganoksin.com/invite.htm
____________________________________________________________________
Tips From The Jeweler's Bench - Article Archive
~ http://www.ganoksin.com/borisat/tip_sear.htm
The Jeweler's Selected Bibliography List
~ http://www.ganoksin.com/jewelry-books
Buy Orchid Jewelry:
~ http://www.ganoksin.com/shop
____________________________________________________________________
-Unsubscribe:
-Email: orchid-request AT ganoksin.com Body=unsubscribe subject=blank
____________________________________________________________________