Polishing & Finishing the Chain
Lesson 4 from: Intermediate Chain Making for Jewelry MakingBonnie Heras
Polishing & Finishing the Chain
Lesson 4 from: Intermediate Chain Making for Jewelry MakingBonnie Heras
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Lesson Info
Polishing & Finishing the Chain
Now since we have so many individual parts here you may not want to do this by hand now obviously I just showed you how you have to start all the links out individually sand them individually if you wanted to have a really formal finish um you could polish the's individually by hand by you using buffs on the fleck shaft your felt buffs here with tripoli and then rouge now if you're not trying for a mere finish there is a faster way now you can use this lovely toe over here the tumbler tio get you that finish so you won second? Um turner just once again eso how this works so this is a tool some of you who might be familiar there tumbled rocks, child or whatever. So inside of our container is steel shot now there's different um media mrs referred tio this particular steel shot has it's a multi ones you kind of see that there's like round shapes long shapes kind of oblong shapes. You can buy different types of steel, shot that's one shape or get a multi one like you're seeing here which k...
ind of allows you teo kind of cover any type of metal that you're going to work with. So the purpose of this when you're using steel shot what this does is that I'm gonna place my chain in here and I'm going to fill this with water and a tumbling solution is one option. You could also just do water and soap. Believe it or not, we'll do the job or water and ammonia. And what? This is going to d'oh here? Um, this is going to rule. So this turns here and it's going to tumble. Um, where the little pieces of parts the shot are going to, like, slowly over time hit against the metal. This is gonna work hard that wire so that it actually stiffens it up. It adds little structural integrity. And also this is how we get our shine. Now, this process can take quite a bit of time on average, I would say, at least in our tumbling on dh. Um, depending on how shiny you wanted, the longer you leave it in. So let's, say, a poured my solution in here. Now, this is tension fit. So I'm gonna put the cap back in here, there's a little lip and kind of see right there for this. Is it into my chains in there now, something else. Before I forget, I noticed that the steel shot does not fill the container. You see that, um, when you're feeling it, with water as well as the solution don't go like think of an inch above the steel shot do not fill this whole thing with water it's really important that you don't do that because it wants it turns and turns and and moves around it comes aired gets compressed in there and the pressure of all that it can actually make the lid pop and it's on an angle, and so that it could spill everywhere and so you don't need to put a lot of solution, and there you don't need to have a lot of water it needs. There needs to be extra room for everything to move around, so keep that in mind to get an inch above the steel shot. So place my little on here sometimes, you know, give it a little forced to pop in, then there's this rubber ring that the tumbler comes with, we have we happen to get a kid. So cem tumblers actually like comeon kit form, you get the steel shot and if you start using this for other context like this really good for, um, when you're doing hearings and you're trying to harden your wire because it's really flimsy and saying they could easily break a really great, wolf, tio, work hard in your small items if you were doing this, like doing individual jump rings, this is a really great way of doing it to just throw it all in there, and you can clean everything at once so in a place in on here, sitting it just on the wheels, and then we can plug it in and it will start to turn for us and it's kind of like it's in there you go walk away, stand something else if you're working on something else. Um, bonding just quick question came in from online about the difference in the solutions that you're using within within the drum doesn't make any difference if you're using ammonia. Sophie, what sort of different results you get? It's really depends on the metal. It depends on the shine and it's. Also, just a matter of, um what you're going for, some people find that let's say you did a little polish people use it as a cleaning agent, too. So it's like you to do a little polishing, you have polishing compound on your metal. Still, museum ammonia actually helps kind of get the compound, but let's, say, if you had a textured piece and there's some highs and lows in your piece, that helps kind of get that, um compound out of those low areas because it helps break it down. Um, dish soap just works is fine. Some people really believe that you get better results with a tumbling solution, but, you know, and there's some companies auto fried, provides them. Theirs is a few other companies that provide them. But, um, honestly, it's up to debate.
Class Materials
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Ratings and Reviews
Judy Craik
I thought Bonnie was very informative, however I didn’t like the camera angles. Most classes I take, the focus is the table and shows the teachers hands. Thank you Bonnie, I enjoyed you short class.