Hi, great videos. Unless coated, files are made of high carbon steel they are have the serrations cut into the steel then hardened after they are brought up to glass hard are then tempered to make them tough. You cannot damage the teeth by pulling the file back on the material or draw filling unless the file chatters on hard materials i.e HSS or HCS steel but they can clog on soft material so use a file card to keep the files good. I am now retired from 30+ year's of engineering and welding experience. I hope this helps. Many thanks for making the video.
Wow!! You did that all without fancy torches, good on you. When I first started out with jewellery a few monthes ago, a proper torch really helped. I also make jewellery videos if your interested :)
Haha yeah I really like to use my Smith's torch, it really does make everything easier. I haven't had a chance to watch any of your videos yet but from the thumb nails it looks like you have done some good work with silver and gold.
Thanks again, your videos are quite fun to watch. I have some of the tools gathered to start making this type of ring. As it stands, I just wrap my rings right now, but think I could do this.
love the vids, i have learned quite a few things,so now i return the favor.. when you aneal metal,do not quench it, anealing lines up the molicule, make it soft, quenching reverses the process make metal hard again... hope this helps... im a jeweler in st louis, been doing this for 17 yrs
Awsome video as always. So easy to follow and brought up good pointers like getting right size , polishing etc. I need to get better at finishing and polishing. Will make these soon
Thank you. I do try to point out little things I have picked up when dealing with small problems I once had. Do you happen to have a bench polishing wheel?
GomeowCreations have two questions. I have not been soldering Jewelry for long and still use small torch , Actually works fine. What would you recommend a step up stoch without spending a ton ? The one you used in video ? And is a dremmel for finishing ? Having trouble highlighting etching designs etc
Well , the main torch set up that I have is oxygen acetylene. It is two tanks that feed into my smith's mini torch. the full setup, with gas in it was about $500-$650 if I'm remembering right. As for finishing, you can using a dremmel, that is 100% doable if you have all the right tips for doing so. For polishing I like to use a larger 4 in polishing wheel to get a nice shine on my work very quickly but you can use a dremmel or flex shaft to polish your work. This is the 4 in tool I'm talking about ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-KWIGg1_clL4.htmlm37s
Great. Very great work and all your pieces are simple and beautiful. I love how you make this look easy, you are very good with your work and I am a happy costumer. Thank you again. 🙏💫🙌😍
I feel like watching your videos have truly help restore a lot of the confidence I lost in myself regarding metal work, recently I started messing around a bit, bought some cheap tools and copper/silver wire and plate metal...started to slowly get back into it...made a few crappy pieces but I felt so good, good enough to face a painful past where I was made to feel "not good enough" "a failure"...So I finally dusted off my old student toolbox/sketchbook I had in storage in my parents garage that I had put away as a scared/deflated 17 y/o...its taken 5 years to work up the courage to even step into that garage and face those demons and I owe some of that courage to your videos...I dont think you will ever know what that means to me - So when I say Thank You so so much for posting I truly mean that. :) P.s this is my next project.
I'm very touched to hear that my videos are helping you get passed your negative feelings towards jewelry making. If you need any advice or have any questions feel free to email me and I will try to help you out. Also once you get to a point that you're comfortable sharing your work, I would like to see what you have done.
+GomeowCreations Thank you for that and I feel like Ive caught a bug, creatively speaking and of course, i sure would like to show yo my work, but i;ll save you from the crappy pieces ive been messing round with 😕 - a little while back I made a very simple gold filled simple bracelet (for my sister) and silver link bracelet (for my aunty) both texture hammered...be sending you those pics soon 🙂🙃
Couple of new person questions. Do you make your own pickling solution? Is it basically to just clean the surface? What do you use to dip your hot metal? Is the solder specific to the metal you’re using?
I don't make my own pickling solution but you can using white vinegar and salt. That the pick does is clean off the fire scale and oxidation off of your work. Solder will not stick to dirty metal so this makes it clean and workable. To cool my metal down after heating it I just dunk it is some water that is in a ceramic bowl. The solder I use is mostly is called hard silver solder but it also comes in med, easy and extra easy. All that really means is how much heat it takes to melt. I use this some solder on copper brass and silver. If I'm working with gold I use gold solder.
just wonderful video, you describe every steps very simply and clearly, thank you so much. Which metals can be used for making that kind of rings except copper and silver? for example can we use aluminum wire or is stainless steel sheets convenient for this job?
Well you can use brass and gold too. As for aluminum, it will just melt. And stainless steel is a lot harder to work with and I don't think you can solder it.
Wonderful instruction as always! Maybe you can help me with an issue I'm running into. It is a little difficult to explain but here it goes. How can I ball up round wire on both ends to attach two thin pieces of flattened metal (without melting the thin flattened metal)? I have over lapped the thin sheets a little, pierced the two, balled one end of wire but the second end is impossible to ball up! 😭
I'm going to have to see what you are talking about before I can give any advice. Send some pictures to my email gomeowcreations@gmail.com and I will try and help you out to the best of my abilities.
As always I lok forward to seeing your work. I see you got he copper VERY hot. It looked almost wet at the point of the solder flowing. Is that exclusive to copper? I've never gotten my silver that hot before.
Thank you, I have a lot more videos planned for the near future. When I work with copper I tend to get it very hot. The wet look might be due to the flux I put all over it.
When I try to beat the ring into size on the mandrel my solder joint ends up snapping. I rectified that by making my ring as round as possible before soldering. I need practice I guess.
I too seem to get this problem sometimes. I work mostly with silver, using silver solder and use Handy Flux for my flux (recommended by a friend.) And rings I don't hammer have held up pretty well, but if I try to hammer out, or bend them back to shape, the joint will break apart sometimes:( I am still fairly new to jewelry making. (Soldering) I usually do wire wrap work and recently over the last few months have gotten into soldering and fusing silver.etc.
Btw, your videos, along with a couple others have been a tremendous help with my jewelry making. Thank you so very much for your help and sharing your talents.
I've been using copper mostly. Haven't had the confidence to switch over to silver. Copper's easy. I don't give a damn about messing up so I'm free to experiment. I experimented with electroforming and I am loving the results. I might just have to try electroforming silver. I really enjoy turning rough stones into cabochons. I make them quite small and they look good on rings. But finding a worthless rock and polishing it up is what I like.
I did have this problem when I first started to learn how to solder. I fixed this problem by making sure that my metal had no gaps in it at all, also I had to make sure they the metal was clean. Once I did that I have no problems with rings splitting.
Thank you for the video! I am still having trouble with finding the right dremel bits to clean up my excess solder, would you please share your the Dremel bits you use in order? What was the rough bit type you used in the video? Thank you!
amzn.to/2pzVLOy and this amzn.to/2puEOG3 is what I use. you can also use this amzn.to/2G1xzM4 but make sure to be very careful with them because they can take a lot of material away very fast. 👍
Hi, I am wondering, is your "little fan" considered ventilation? Aren't we supposed to exhaust the fumes out of the work environment, not just blow it around? Hopefully, you at least have an open window, - worried about you, wanna keep you around!! Oh, and have you seen/considered Andrew Berry's video on how to make a ring the "best way" for thick wire? It's a revelation!
So my little fan has come aluminum ducting that goes to my window that is attached to a in window fan 😁👍 so I should be safe and thank you for your concern. As for that video form Andrew, I will watch it now and get back to you ASAP.
GomeowCreations that’s the one. I use this sort of method and it quite effective. The off cuts make great casting “grain” for pouring an ingot later down the road. Or making accents. (Granules etc)
Randy! I'm gonna turn you over my knee! Water makes steel rust. Dry your work off before you take your pliers to a piece or putting it on your anvil/bench block. Dann! Take better care of your tools. A little wd-40 or some 3-in-1 oil to coat your tools will protect them. I don't know about you, but I can't afford to buy new tools every year. Naughty boy. This is particularly important for dapping tools.
Yeah, I do know that I need to keep water off my tools but seeing that I had to keep all of my tools outside of over a year, they all have rust on them. I'm going to be building up my tool collection again and this time I can keep them inside and rust free.