Tools List for My November 2018 Classes at The Gem Expo!!!

I don't know why, but Facebook doesn't like me at all today and none of these posts are... well, posting.

Here are pictures of the tools -- IF you have them and/or IF you're planning on buying them -- that will be used in my classes. I only have a few tools to share because yes, they can be expensive.

The Totally Addicting Stretch Bracelets for Beginners course on Saturday morning, November 10th, is easy in terms of supplies -- if you have one, bring a bead board (available at Michael's) which will make your life so much easier choosing and placing beads, and a pair of sharp, pointed thread scissors or sharp, pointed wire cutters, see picture below. The point being -- okay, yeah, bad joke -- you need to get in and do fine, close cutting, and big scissors will just make your life harder.

These are my go-to wire cutters now, and they're perfect for getting in close to the knot on the bracelets.

If you'll be adding dangles to your bracelets, you'll need pliers to open and close jump rings. This is my go-to minimum set of pliers which are what you'll need for most jewellery-making anyway. I only have a few extra tools, so please bring tools if you have them. If you're going to buy tools anyway, spend as much as you can afford on jewellery-making tools. Your hands will thank you. Those red-handled "sparkle" tools in the middle are 10 years old, and are still doing okaaaay, although I am slowly upgrading to more ergonomic tools, such as on the left.

The above tools are the minimum required for wire work, in particular, and if you are taking the Nifty Tips & Tricks class on Sunday afternoon, please bring these tools if you have them as I only have a couple of each to share. L to R: Bent nose, chain nose (opening/closing jump rings, holding wire), round nose (for making loops) and pointed wire cutters.

Also for the Nifty Tips & Tricks class, we will be hammering wire, and these also are the minimum tools if you decide to carry on at home. If you can bring at least a chasing hammer (with the flat head) and a rawhide or plastic mallet that would be great. I will be showing you what these are for. Also necessary is either a square, 4" by 4" bench block, or a anvil. A planishing hammer, with a slightly convex head, is also very useful.

Top to bottom: planishing hammer, rawhide mallet (or with a plastic head is fine, about 1" diameter head), chasing (flat head) hammer (7/8" to 1" head is fine), anvil and bench block. A 4" square bench block is probably more useful for this class (and I have several to share), but I like my anvil. It's extremely useful.

There are any number of different, useful tools, gadgets and gizmos on the market, many very specific to one technique or another, but these are generally what I've found essential and use all the time.

Where do I buy tools? These are just a few of the retail outlets that I know and buy from in the Toronto and southern Ontario area.

www.roberthalloriginals.com in St. George, Ontario, between Cambridge and Brantford. You'll often see them at gem and mineral shows with a huge selection of tools, findings and beads. You can also buy dead soft copper wire by the ounce and pound from Robert Hall. Dead soft copper wire is what we'll be using in the class.

www.canbead.com/tools out of Ottawa. They do a lot of bead and gem&mineral shows in the Toronto and southern Ontario area, as well as by mail.

https://transcontinentaltoolco.com/ Located in the basement of 55 Queen St. East, Toronto, across from St. Mikes. Retail and wholesale professional jewellery supplies.

Michael's is everywhere, http://www.beadfx.com/ and www.artonbeads.net in Toronto, just two stores off the top of my head -- the list is endless. Most bead stores do sell at least some tools.

NOTE!!! 

HARDWARE STORE TOOLS 

ARE NOT SUITABLE FOR JEWELLERY-MAKING!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

If you have any other questions, PLEASE EMAIL ME at bemacdougall@gmail.com.

Moving shop, Birthday (ick, another one?) & Working Methods...

Since I have so little in my booth space at the One-of-a-Kind Antique Mall, I was asked last week if I'd mind moving down the aisle to another location so the lady across from me could expand. I had no problem agreeing to that. In fact, it worked out to my benefit as I was able to move into a half-booth next door on the other side of the partition.

However, I should have looked around first. There is another half booth up closer to the front of the building. Man, there are some nice things coming into that Antique Mall. I have to stay away or I'll start buying... and I'm supposed to be selling.

Jewellery, collectible beads and tchotchkes are selling well out of my display case up at the front, and I'm very, very pleased about that.

I had another birthday last week. Funny, isn't it, how they keep coming -- and faster and faster. On Tuesday, Winter took me out to the Banana Leaf, a local Thai place. Good spicy food, and sufficiently large portions that I took half my dinner home for lunch the next day on my real birthday.

Winter makes boxes, trading cards and does a killer job wrapping gifts.

Meanwhile, back here in the still-frozen Great White North (minus-20-somethingdisgustingthismorning-Celsius and it snowed AGAIN), I have been working on more copper bones (see Lisa Yang's tutorials). On Saturday I mindlessly cut up wire for a few hours while sitting at the market and reduced the length of the bones to see what they would look like. The original ones were 1" and with a twist. I cut and hammered a set of bones at 7/8" without turning them, so they look like "real" bones, ditto a set at 3/4" with a twist. Yes, I'm totally bilingual when it comes to bead measurements. I'm fine using metric for bead diameters and weight, but everything else is in inches.

What I was working on yesterday while hammering was trying to keep the bench block from moving so much every time I hammered it, and to reduce the noise. First, I cleared off the table so I don't have to stop in mid-hammer to rescue something from falling off the table.

Oh, yeah -- the blue cloth is a silver-cleaning cloth. I noticed all the black gunk smeared everywhere -- that's from the Sharpie marks used for cutting the wire and it gets ground into the copper and the bench block and the hammer head itself from all the hammering -- and all over my fingers. Next time I'll clean that off the wire pieces first, rather than doing it afterwards. Sigh... But again, that's something I can do easily at the market while sitting. It helps to be doing something that intrigues people, convinces them that you really DO make the jewellery, and it's something that can be put down easily when someone does stop by.

Working at an angle seems to be the best for me. I had put my bench block on a bead mat last time, but I decided to try a folded t-towel this time. Maybe I'll try a bath towel next time. I like to work at an angle. I recently read somewhere that someone likes using their anvil better than the bench block, so I thought I'd try it. I tried hammering, but the towel and the anvil still bounced around with every blow. Working with the anvil on its side gives a larger area for the hammer to hit, but also keeps the end of the wire being hammered closer to the centre of the work surface which helped towards minimising the movement of the cloth, but it still didn't do anything about movement of the anvil on the cloth.

Note the Sharpie sticking out. I worked it out that using my index finger and thumb to hold the wire against the anvil (fingers not ON the anvil, only the wire) had my middle finger pushing the anvil into the pen and leaned the bulk of my hand on the cloth/table, it worked quite well.

Keep the anvil pressed firmly against the Sharpie. Anything would work, a stick, etc.

Showing the back view of how I've positioned my fingers when hammering -- keeping them well away from the hammer.

Showing half the wire hanging off the back of the anvil surface with the anvil pushing firmly against the pen.

Finished 7/8" bones hammered straight and awaiting holes to be punched and then the tedious business of filing all the burrs. I also made more horseshoes for a necklace, and these links came out much more evenly using the barrel of a Sharpie. This is another project easy to do (except for the hammering) while sitting at the market waiting for customers.

Let me know if you try this, and if the pictures help or hinder. Writing instructions and taking photos to illustrate each step is not as easy as it looks.

I'm sure there's some traditional bench gadget that's been in use for hundreds of years that would make this all moot, but for a quick hammering on a few items where you don't require a professional and permanent setup and/or don't plan on hammering for hours on end this works fairly well as it's portable and uses items we all have on hand.

Thanks for looking!

Memory of Max & Getting Hammered...

Yeah, it was around 1:00 a.m. in the morning, one year ago today, that Max started to die. The day itself, like today, was sunny, Max's favourite kind of day to go running around burrowing and playing in the snow.

Still cannot believe how much I miss my little fuzzy boy every single day.

Wire-wrap chain:
On other fronts, I got a commission on Saturday at the market and put it together yesterday. I had made the chain during one of my Netflix marathons back in the fall and Winter brought me the pendant. Since the pendant is provided, I figure this length of chain (about 44 inches) would cost $50. These are vintage 100-year-old greasy blue Venetian glass seed beads that I got from Naomi at Black Tulip Designs wrapped in hard temper copper wire which I buy by the pound from The Ring Lord. Using the hard temper wire is murder on my fingers, but I find I have a lot more control over the shape of the loops. Soft copper is really mushy for this type of chain. In the closeup photo you can appreciate the depth and lustre. These beads are wonderful. New beads don't hold a candle to them.

Getting hammered:
I'm subscribed to Lisa Yang's jewellery blog and lately Lisa's been posting a series of tuts on basic jewellery-making. I'm always a fan of going back to the basics, if only to find out about new tools and new materials to play with, not to mention the chance that someone somewhere has come up with a new and improved way of doing some simple thing.

I haven't done any hammering for at least two years -- mostly because I was doing other things, but also this past year I'd been living where hammering wasn't feasible. If you've ever lived on a river, especially bounded by cliffs on either side, you'll understand how all sounds are magnified like crazy up and down the river. But now I'm out in the country again and, while I have neighbours on either side of me, we're also bounded on three sides by gravel pits and manufacturing facilities all making their own assorted noises, and a vast golf course to the west. Therefore, I feel free to whack away... although maybe not in the middle of the night.

Lisa has been demoing so-called "bone" connectors, and I made two batches yesterday, trying to beat her time. I'm down to about 2 minutes per "bone". I've said this before: I'm no jewellery designer; I'm a technician. I love to figure out ways to do things easier, faster and more efficiently. Since I would like to sell my stuff, the more efficiently I work the less time it takes me to make things and the greater my profit margin; the less I can sell an item for the better my chances of selling something. Plus I get bored really quickly and like to do repetitive stuff fast.

I used to work in newspaper and printing binderies and know about optimising papers and envelopes on a table in order to stuff envelopes and newspapers. It's no different when one is hammering wire. And I get a production line going.

The first thing I became aware of yesterday was the height at which I was sitting at my folding table. I have a wicker chair I sit at. There was a HUGE difference in ease of hammering when I put the cushion back on the chair as it raised me up 3 inches. I've found I like to sit lower and hunched over with my nose closer to the table top when I'm stringing or wire-wrapping. I found the hammering went much easier, more efficiently (and therefore faster) and I had better control over the effect because I had more arm control when I was sitting up higher in particular because I was using hard-tempered 14 gauge copper wire. I also found I could only hammer three or four "bones" at a time and had to take a couple of minutes' break in between each batch. Even though I'm ambidextrous most of the time, I'm not good at hammering using my left hand. I'm going to look like a lopsided Popeye when I'm finished this. Muskles on top of muskles.

Remove anything you don't need from the table. In mid-whack, a big bin of beads sitting on the corner landed upside down on the floor... absolutely everything jumps around when hammering. Using a doubled over beading mat keeps the noise level and the bouncing down, but I'm still working on figuring out how to keep the bench block itself as well as the mat from moving. The bead mat helps, and I noticed if I hammer wire in the middle of the block, it tends to stay in one place, but when holding short wire "bones" I'd be forever hammering my fingers to a pulp so this time I was stuck hammering closer to the edge of the block. I'm wondering, since I've seen other people use it in tutorials, if using a piece of leather would keep the bench block in place. I'd love to hear from someone if that is true. Makes me wish I hadn't been so hasty throwing out an old purse that I could have cut up.

Note that I use memory wire cutters for the thicker, harder wire gauges and always when I'll be hammering any wire as it cuts off truly square and 45 degrees to the length of the wire, rather than angled as with the regular cutters. I really appreciated the pure efficiency of this punch that I bought a while back and used for the first time. I also have one of those gizmos that you screw down to punch a hole with, but this is way, way faster. Note also the diamond file. I used that to clean off the burrs from the punch, as well as cleaned up any sharp edges around the hammered ends. I thought the pack of diamond files to be really expensive when I first bought them, but I use them all the time for so many different things.

Lacking a tumbler (and having to live with the fine scratches from the file), I opted to use ketchup to clean my finished bones.

Smooshing the pieces around. Takes only seconds to clean them.

Finish with some dish detergent and rinse. A scrubbie and soap got rid of any Sharpie marks. I have filtered well water with unknown mineral content so I'll need to get some distilled water. 

A New Toy for Ruth & Me:
Every show I do I try to upgrade and/or buy one item to make life easier in an away venue. For the March 14th, 15th & 16th Gem Expo in Toronto I bought a dolly. Since hotel luggage carts are at a premium (let alone unavailable in some venues) waiting for half an hour or more to unload and load up my truck is not what I want to be doing especially at the end of the show when I'm looking forward to a two-hour drive home.

Even though this dolly is all-metal, it is still about the same weight as the mostly plastic one that cost $10-$15 more, and is less bulky/bulbous. Plus this one can be used both vertically and horizontally. My trick will be to keep track of those cotter pins that lock the handlebar in place. Since I'm basically hauling bins of rocks, I need the sturdier all-metal construction and the big wheels, essential when moving heavy loads on dirt paths, grass, snow, uneven road surfaces and humping up and down steps which, if a dolly is going to collapse on you, these are the exact places.

I also bought some half-size bins with the flip-flop locking lids -- I'm forever misplacing lids -- so that everything not only stacks, the smaller sizes will hold more-reasonably-easy-to-heave-around quantities of beads and jewellery. My goal is to get everything into two sizes of bins, ditch the open top liquor store cardboard boxes, and anything else will fit into Tyvek shopping bags, still stackable and portable/easy to heave around.

Hammered Tinned Copper Earrings:
I promptly lost the first batch of copper bones I made. Zero idea where they got to. Made a second batch. Then I made these using 14 gauge tinned copper. Very soft wire. See how wiggly and bendy these got compared to the hard temper copper wire that really held its shape, but the tinned copper does goosh out a lot easier.

This morning I was contemplating them and wondered if the "waterfall" effect looks better (the earring on the right). I think it does. My online pal Joanne over at Nelson Gemstones agreed, but also suggested these would look better with the large jump rings in a silver colour. She just got back from Tucson: go check out the new beads she scored on her Facebook page. I'm so jealous!!! Next year!

Now to get off this computer and go make a chain out of the "bone" connectors and make more of these earrings and figure out a necklace variation.

Hope everyone is having a relaxing Family Day here in Canada and President's Day down in the US.

Went to Bulk Barn for the first time in over a year, and since they renovated.
This poster made me laugh. Yummy!!!

Thanks for looking!