Jewelry making tools

Jewelry making tools
Hi I’m Courtney Gray, we’re here at Hard Court Studios’ in East Austin, Texas. You can find us online at courtneygrayarts.com and there’s more information about the studio on here. We have many artists in house as well as jewelry makers. Today I’m going to show you how to put together a basic tool kit to get started making your own jewelry either at home or in a rented studio whatever you decide works the best. I for one started in my garage, which works fine except in the summer of course. And basically what you’d need is a surface to start with. This is a very make shift home made bench I made probably six years ago or so just out of a desk I found on the side of the road. I painted it, gave it a nice little paint job, built up a make shift bench pin which is an essential tool and component of jewelry making, which is basically just a clamp. You want a nice anvil type surface to hammer on and a wood surface to brace your jewelry against as you work it. The next thing I would suggest so you could see well is getting an optivisor. Some people need this, some don’t most of the big time jewelers use these all the time. It’s pretty essential to see things up close, we worked with such tiny stuff all day your eyes get kind of tired. This is an essential tool in my book. The next thing would probably be to collect the basic hand files. Depends on what you’re going to dive into, if you’re going to work with silver or wax you’re going to need some jewelry hand files. These aren’t actually jewelry tools, you can find them at your local hardware store. They’re pretty inexpensive, they come in round, half round, flat. You’ve got your different angles there which you will find a few of them being more necessary than others. Okay the next thing that you want to do is get some different types of files to see what’s best for you. These are more course files that will remove larger amount of material in a shorter amount of time. It’s good for heavy removal and when you’re working with silver. You can get really fine files they go from different coarseness ness and so you can get basically whatever works for whatever material you’re working with. Another essential thing to acquire is some safety glasses. These are a little intensive, they have lights on them which I find handy but is more than you need. Just something basic to keep metal from flying on you, just a good safety precaution. The next thing would be to collect a few hammers to get started. This is a balltene hammer that works great for rounding and texturing for silver, different kinds of metal, bronze, gold whatever you decide to work with. Pretty good tool to have. The rawhide mallet is a big tool for jewelers as well. Hammering out, reshaping rings, things to this nature. You can hit your metal with it and basically it won’t mar or scar up your metal or dent it. So it’s a nice essential tool as well. I’m definitely going to need a soft blade. The blade I have in here right now is a wax blade, this is for cutting out pieces of wax. There are also blades for cutting silver sheet things like that. Which look like this the silver sheet. You can buy it in different sizes, different gages, and different thicknesses. Some come with texture already on it, you can play with that. There’s a lot of options for you there. The saw blades that you need for that come in also different thickness and sizes and will break on you a lot at first. But you do get a hand on it, it takes a very light touch. Those come in packs of twelve and you can buy from your bead store, jewelry supply company and local supply company. You’re also going to need a scribe, something to mark your design onto, to draw your patterns out onto silver or wax. Whichever you’re working with. It’s a pretty essential tool. That can be as simple as going to the garage and finding your old protractor and using the tip on that to mark down, write down, and draw out your pattern. But there’s more of course jewelry style tools out there.