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Hi all,
If you don't know of me, I am an ageing goldsmith who just loves hand
saw piercing, I can quite happily pierce all day given the
oppertunity. Recently Helen remarked that she has problems saw
piercing thin metals, well recently I had a job to replace some
missing pierced gold decorations in an antique tortoise shell box.
These decorations were to be cut from 0.2mm. thick 22ct. gold which
is almost impossible to saw pierce as it is so thin and flexible,
well the simple answer was for me to super glue the 22ct. sheet onto
a piece of 0.5mm. silver sheet, then I engraved my patternwork onto
the 22ct. and pierced the now 0.7mm. thick double layer sheet. After
I had pierced the decorations I polished them and finally gently
heated the pieces with a torch flame and the super glued sheets
seperated leaving my 0.2mm piercings to be glued into the tortoise
shell box. My customer was well pleased with the finished
restoration. I once did a master class about hand saw piercing at a
local college that taught jewellery, most students were bothered by
breaking too many saw blades and the most common cause was an
insecure bench pin, for some reason the teacher at this college did
not know that an insecure piercing pin increases the likelyhood of
regular saw blade breaks. I tried to teach the students that the
items being pierced should be total firm on the bench pin so that you
need little pressure hold the item in securely place while piercing.
The other common problem while piercing was that they would hold the
saw frame in line with the eye and pierce away from their face, I was
taught to hold the sawframe at right angles to the eye and pierce
across the eyeline. I was taught to saw this way with my master
saying that " it is better to see where the blade is going, rather
than where it has been". Also let the saw blade do the cutting, it
only cuts on it's downward stroke, the saw does not need much
horizontal pressure just an even pace of up and down strokes. As for
blade lubrication, I have been using the same method for the past 47
years and it works perfectly for me, I use a 6 inch wax candle,
rubbed up the back of the sawblade at regular intervals when resting
from cutting, if you are piercing thicker metals the blade will get
hot and the wax soon becomes liquid on the blade, adding the wax to
the back of the blade stops the wax blocking the view of the cutting
line while piercing. I have five different depth saw frames, all of
German manufacture and I use Glarden Valorbe Saw blades, sizes 6.0
up to 0. See my work here:
http://www.ganoksin.com/exhibition/v/orchid/JamesMiller
Or my book is available on pre order from Amazon, due for publication
in March 2009: Titled: The Work of a Master Goldsmith: A Unique
Collection.
Peace and good health to all. If I can give any further tips or
answer any questions, please ask.
James Miller FIPG
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