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<=> <=> <=> <=> E-BENCH <=> <=> <=> <=>
The E-Mail Newsletter for Bench Jewelers
December 2003
Volume 4 Issue 12 circulation
over 2,600
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<=> <=> ABOUT THIS NEWSLETTER <=> <=>
E-BENCH is a FREE monthly newsletter for Retail
Jewelry Store Owners, Shop Managers, Bench
Jewelers and Anyone Else That Is Interested.
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<=> <=> <=> TABLE OF CONTENTS <=> <=> <=>
REVERE’S TIPS FOR JEWELERS
Tips for Jewelers,
Who Do Repairs from Alan Revere
FEATURE ARTICLE
Learn how to make your shop more profitable, a
new technique, or brush up on basic skills.
STEWART'S BENCH TIPS
Bench Tips from
Stewart’s International School for Jewelers
AT THE PLATINUM BENCH
Tips for working on Platinum from
Platinum Guild International
FAVORITE TIPS
Tips and Tricks to make your work on the bench
a little easier and more productive from
Bradney W. Simon CMBJ and E-BENCH Readers.
GERRY’S GEMZ
Stone setting tips from Gemz Diamond Setting
WORKSHOP SAFETY FOR JEWELERS
Tips from Charles Lewton-Brian
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<=> <=> <=> E-BENCH SPONSOR <=> <=> <=>
Books from MJSA/AJM Press:
At the Bench and The Platinum Bench
Simplify your
bench work!
The two award-winning books of MJSA/AJM Press,
The Platinum Bench by Jurgen J. Maerz and At
the Bench by Gregg Todd and Greg Gilman,
feature a wealth of time-saving tips, and
illustrated, easy-to-follow instructions on the
repair and fabrication of gold, silver, and
platinum jewelry. Based on the popular At the
Bench section in AJM, both books feature
hundreds of photographs on everything from
simplified pave setting to easy 18k inlay in
platinum.
To download sample chapters, go to
http://www.mjsainc.com/info_press.php.
For more information, call 1-800-444-6572, ext.
3038.
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<=> <=> REVERE’S TIPS FOR JEWELERS <=> <=>
Tips for Jewelers Who Do Repairs
from Alan Revere
Revere Academy of Jewelry Arts
Learn which gemstones are safe to heat, clean
ultrasonically, steam, set under pressure, etc.
and remove the rest before exposing them to
potential damage.
Find a lost diamond on the floor by shutting
off the lights and searching with a flashlight.
Avoid damaging the quality stamp when repairing
an item. If you remove the stamp and replace
it, you might be held responsible for its
accuracy.
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<=> <=> QUOTE WORTH RE-QUOTING <=> <=>
A sensible man embarks on an enterprise until
he can see his way clear to the end of it.
Aesop
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Jewelry Dealers World Trade Network
http://www.JewelryDealersNetwork.com
<=> Bench Jeweler Discussion Channel <=> >
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ongoing discussions, or just read and take in
all the advice from many excellent jewelers
from around the world.
Membership includes: Topical Discussion
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Buy/Sell Channels, Plus Much More.
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<=> <=> <=> FEATURE ARTICLE <=> <=> <=>
Bench Ph.D.
Part 2
Last month we looked at the need for organizing
your bench. This month we will look at methods
for organizing it. You can find last month’s
article and all back issues of E-Bench at
www.BWSimon.com/EBENCH.
Organizing your tools is not just a matter of
having a place for everything and everything in
its place. It requires putting tools in an
order that make sense to you, the person who
uses them. For example, the seemingly logical
manner to organize your solder would be in rows
for easy, medium, and hard, sorted in columns
by karat and color. However, this is much too
confining for many bench jewelers, who may
prefer to organize their solder by placing
their 14K yellow gold easy flow solder on the
right side of their flux bottle and the white
on the left side. 18K solders are over by the
boric acid and alcohol cup and hard solders are
next to the solder tweezers.
There is no set pattern to organizing your
bench; each jeweler should arrange their tools
in a manner that is logical to them. This
arrangement will be dependent upon:
The Types of Tools Used Most Frequently
The Type of Work Most Often Performed
The Personal Mannerism Of The Jeweler
Alan Revere in his book “Professional
Goldsmithing” uses the following description to
illustrate this type of organization.
“Watching a master goldsmith at work is like
watching a concert organist who, in a frenzy of
seemingly blind activity, reaches for just the
right note at just the right moment,
orchestrating the complexities of his or her
art without impediment.”
In reading that description I am reminded of
the church my family attended while I was a
child growing up. The church was an old church
built in the 1880’s. It had a large pipe organ
in the center of the choir loft. The organ
consisted of five keyboards, and over 100
buttons above and to the sides of the
keyboards. What looked like a clutter of
buttons and keys to me, an untrained musician,
was a systematically arranged musical
instrument.
The organist, without taking his eyes off the
music, would move his fingers, hands, and arms
around in a seemingly meaningless manner.
Nevertheless, he produced some beautiful music.
In the same manner, a jeweler works at their
bench surrounded by, what may seem to the
uninformed, a clutter of tools. However, when
needed, without moving their eyes from the
stone they are setting, or other work they are
performing, they retrieve the tool without
effort. Once they perform the work, they just
as effortlessly return the tool to its place.
There it is ready for the next time they need
it.
There are few hard and fast rules for
organizing the tools on your bench. However,
there are two principles to keep in mind that
can be helpful and make your bench more
practical, convenient, and comfortable.
Organizational Principle #1
The first principle is to place tools used most
frequently closest to your workspace, making
them easier to get to and put away. Tools used
less frequently should be stored further away.
These tools should still be within reach; just
a little extra effort is needed to get to them.
Often jewelers make the mistake of organizing
like tools together. For example, all pliers
hang together on one rack. This is a big
mistake. Pliers used everyday get mixed
together with ones you do not use often. This
makes it harder to find the ones you need. In
addition, pliers that are seldom used take up
valuable space near the bench pin. Then, tools
that are used everyday end up being relegated
to a drawer or stored further away making them
harder to get to.
A better alternative is to have two smaller
racks for pliers. One should be near the bench
pin for pliers used everyday and a second rack
placed further away, on the side of the bench,
for example. The same applies for all types of
tools. Place the tools used most often closer
to your bench pin, where you do your work.
Place the other tools further away, still
within reach, but not quite as conveniently.
Tools used less than once a week should be
stored in the back of drawers or in the bottom
drawers. If your bench is already full, these
tools can be stored on shelves or storage units
next to your bench. Shelves or cabinets
mounted on the wall above your bench can also
be used. You want to be able to get to them
easily, but you do not want to clutter your
bench with tools that you seldom use.
Organizational Principle #2
The second principle is to position tools in a
manner that requires little, if any, extra
movement in order to retrieve them and put them
away. I call this type of arranging your
workspace as Ergonization. Ergonization is a
combination of the two words ergonomics and
organization. Ergonomics involves arranging
the work area to fit the body and movement of
the worker. Organization involves arranging
things in an orderly, functional manner. The
goal of Ergonization is to adapt the
organization of the work area to fit the
worker. This maximizes worker efficiency in a
comfortable and convenient manner.
In order to do this you must understand your
workspace in relationship to the movement of
your arms and hands. Watch how you move when
you work. Notice the natural paths your body,
arms, and hands take.
For example, a plier rack can be mounted on the
front edge of your bench centered in the path
your hand moves to begin work. Then when you
move your hand from its normal resting position
to work at your bench pin it can pick up a pair
of pliers on the way. When the work is
finished you can put the pliers back on the
rack as your hand moves away from the bench
pin. If the rack is properly placed, the
pliers are picked up and put away without
effort.
A saw frame can be placed on a hook on the leg
of your bench. The handle of the saw frame is
at the exact spot your hand reaches when you
place your arm comfortably at your side.
Your favorite file or hammer can be placed in
the tool tray just above your lap tray. Place
it right next to the natural resting position
of your hand while resting on your lap tray.
Then, when needed, take hold of it while
bringing your hand up to your work. When
finished, put it away as you place your hand
down to rest. (Other files not used as often
should be stored somewhere else so as not to
clutter the area around your favorite file or
two.)
Another problem is storing tools used together
in the same place. Sometimes you want to do
this such as placing your solder tweezers,
solder pick, flux bottle, etc. near your solder
pad and torch. However, this does not always
prove to be the best thing to do.
For example, I usually use my rawhide mallet
with my ring mandrel when sizing rings. Since
they are used together, I store them together
in the tool tray just above the lap tray in my
bench. I found that most of the time these
tools were never put ‘away’. I came to realize
that I used one tool in one hand and the other
tool in my other hand. In order to reach them
stored together, I had to reach and twist my
body to get to them. Whenever you have to
reach, twist, stretch, or turn to get to a
tool, you are very unlikely to put it away. It
is so much easier to just lay it down on the
bench or in the lap tray. The key to keeping
your bench organized is to make putting away
the tools you use most often as easy as laying
them down.
Since I use my ring mandrel in my left hand,
and my mallet in my right, I now store my ring
mandrel on the left side of my tool tray and my
mallet on the right side. Then when needed
both hands can reach out and pick-up the tools.
When finished I can just as effortlessly put my
hands down and put them away, which makes it
easier to find them the next time I need to use
them. In fact, I can sit down at my bench at
any time, reach out my hands, and pick up my
ring mandrel and mallet without ever looking
down to find them.
You do not need fancy, expensive equipment to
organize your bench. In fact, too many people
make the mistake of buying all sorts of
commercial organizing products in the mistaken
belief that these products in and of themselves
will automatically organize their workspace.
Unfortunately, this will not happen - and often
they only add to the clutter.
Your goal in organizing your bench should be to
make it comfortable, personal, and workable.
The only permanent way out of chaos is to
discard your string of excuses and accept
responsibility for yourself and your work
environment. Instead of saying that your bench
is messy because you are creative, use your
wonderful God-given abilities and come up with
a creative way to organize your bench. Do not
try to organize your bench in a left-brain,
abstract way - accept your differences, and
learn to enjoy and appreciate the unique ways
your brain works.
Remember there is no such thing as hopelessly
disorganized.
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<=> <=> QUOTE WORTH RE-QUOTING <=> <=>
I never could have done what I have done
without the habit of punctuality, order, and
diligence.
Charles Dickens
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<=> <=> STEWART'S BENCH TIPS <=> <=>
Bench Tips from Stewart’s International School
for Jewelers
http://www.stewartsintlschool.com/
Sometimes when you try to tighten a diamond the
prongs spring back. To tighten the diamond in
these situations you need to tighten the
diamond VECTORALLY. Using a non-serrated
pointed nose pliers bend the adjacent prongs a
little, below the girdle, towards each other
and go all the way around the diamond.
To "SQUARE OFF" a diamond in a four-prong
setting, the prong should rest on the upper
girdle facet (Split Facet) with the tip of the
prong to the lower edge of the Star Facet.
Place the prongs at the corners of either
square.
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<=> <=> QUOTE WORTH RE-QUOTING <=> <=>
What is the use of running when we are not on
the right road?
German Proverb
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<=> <=> <=> E-BENCH SPONSOR <=> <=> <=>
The Ganoksin Project
www.ganoksin.com
The Gem and Jewelry Pre-Eminent Online
Resources. Open to the
public
Free of Charge.
A substantial library of articles,
publications, reports, and technical data on
gem and jewelry related topics; as well as a
sizable collection of art and jewelry
galleries, for both the casual visitor and the
professional, also host the popular Orchid
online forums for jewelers.
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<=> <=> AT THE PLATINUM BENCH <=> <=>
Tips for working on Platinum from
Jurgen J. Maerz CMBJ,
Director of Technical Education
for Platinum Guild International
http://www.pgi-platinum-tech.com
Sometimes when annealing platinum it is
possible to contaminate the platinum with other
metals. Some filings or some solder chips on a
soldering surface or any other metal on the
bench can be melted into platinum, thus
contaminating the area.
To repair, grind the contamination away with a
ball burr leaving a hole that you can fill.
Next, take a small piece of the same platinum
alloy the object is made of and weld it to fill
the hole. Filing the excess metal away, you
create an invisible repair. To prevent this
contamination from happening in the first
place, soak your platinum in a 10% solution of
Nitric acid for about 10 minutes, before
annealing, welding or soldering.
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<=> <=> QUOTE WORTH RE-QUOTING <=> <=>
Make it your ambition to lead a quiet life, to
mind your own business and to work with your
hands, so that your daily life may win the
respect of outsiders and so that you will not
be dependent on anybody.
1 Thessalonians 4: 11 – 12
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<=> <=> <=> E-BENCH SPONSOR <=> <=> <=>
Bench Jewelers Conference & Expo
Coming April 23 - 25 2004 to Chicago IL
Exciting New
Educational Conference and Supplier’s
Expo
Workshops – Seminars - Demonstrations –
Networking Opportunities - Exhibitor Show
All activities during this three day event will
be directed toward the Bench Jeweler,
Making This The One Show In 2004
That You Don’t Want To Miss
Bench Jewelers Conference & Expo presented by
Bench Media publisher of E-BENCH, BENCH
Magazine, and BENCH ROM
For More Information log onto:
www.BWSimon.com/Conference
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<=> <=> <=> FAVORITE TIPS <=> <=> <=>
When channel setting square stones, a tapered
square hole must be cut to accommodate the
pavilion of the stone. One method to
accomplish this is by first using a hart bur
held perpendicular to the mounting to cut the
four-corners. Then, use a small wheel bur to
remove the metal between the corner cuts.
< < < < < <> > > > > >
Test your pumice wheels and other abrasive
wheels on a piece of glass. If they do not
abrade the glass, they will not scratch most
faceted colored stones, and would be safe to
use cleaning up the prongs. Glass is around 5
½ on the Mohs scale, which is softer than most
faceted colored stones. Although these wheels
will not scratch harder gemstones, you still
must use caution as the wheel may chip the
facet lines of fragile stones.
< < < < < <> > > > > >
Grind a groove in the face of your prong pusher
and the jaw of your pliers you use for stone
setting. This will reduce your chances of
slipping.
< < < < < <> > > > > >
Use a round jump ring on the end of chains
instead of an oval ring. When an oval ring is
used, it will always turn lengthwise when worn.
This will cause all the wear on the ends of the
jump ring. If a round jump ring is used and
allowed to turn freely, it will rotate causing
even wear around the ring and it will last
longer.
< < < < < <> > > > > >
When bending metal, use your fingers as much as
possible. This will avoid unnecessary nicks
and marks in the metal. Wood or rawhide tools
should be considered next. Steel tools such as
hammers, pliers, and mandrels should be used
only when necessary.
< < < < < <> > > > > >
Sizing heavy gent’s rings can be difficult
because of the metal thickness in the shank.
Straightening the ring on a ring mandrel can be
particularly challenging. Using a lead-filled,
weighted rawhide mallet or a dead-blow mallet
will provide the extra force needed to make
this job easier.
In addition, when opening up a shank for up
sizing, one of these mallets can be used to
force the ring down on a ring mandrel, after
sawing through the shank.
< < < < < <> > > > > >
If you have a tip you would like to share with
our readers send it in an e-mail to
((((((((((((((((((()))))))))))))))))))
<=> <=> QUOTE WORTH RE-QUOTING <=> <=>
The highest courage is to dare to be yourself
in the face of adversity. Choose right over
wrong, ethics over convenience, and truth over
popularity … these are the choices that measure
your life. Travel the path of integrity
without looking back, for there is never a
wrong time to do the right thing.
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<=> <=> <=> E-BENCH SPONSOR <=> <=> <=>
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<=> <=> <=> GERRY’S GEMZ <=> <=> <=>
Stone setting tips from Gemz Diamond Setting
http://www.gemzdiamondsetting.com/index.html
by Gerald N. Lewy
When securing stones, use a soft metal pusher.
I suggest a copper or brass pusher. This will
prevent making deep marks in the prongs, which
can be difficult to remove later.
I use flat-edge and tapered-edge pumice wheels
of #180 grit on all of my setting items. It’s
not because of being rough on my work. It is
because it is a mark of a “careful, high
quality setter”. I remove all of the plier
marks, graver slipping, and just the general
rough edges left by the ‘casting house’. I do
not want my polishing sub-contractor, to grind
away more than he has to in finishing my
setting work.
((((((((((((((((((()))))))))))))))))))
<=> <=> QUOTE WORTH RE-QUOTING <=> <=>
A man too busy to take care of his health is
like a mechanic too busy to care for his tools.
Spanish Proverb
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<=> <=> <=> E-BENCH SPONSOR <=> <=> <=>
SIMON SEZ SEMINARS
Bradney W. Simon is a JA Certified Master Bench
Jeweler with over 26 years experience on the
bench. He is the Editor and Publisher of
E-BENCH, BENCH Magazine, and BENCH ROM, and is
an accomplished platform speaker, providing
Keynote Speeches, and Educational Seminars.
Topics include:
Shop Management
Bench Tips
Jewelry Demonstrations
For information on having him speak for your
organization, log onto;
http://www.BWSimon.com/SimonSez Seminars
((((((((((((((((((()))))))))))))))))))
<=> <=> WORKSHOP SAFETY FOR JEWELERS <=> <=>
Workshop Safety Tips From Charles Lewton-Brian
And Wash Those Hands
We use our hands so much in a craft shop that
they get exposed to all kinds of chemicals,
material residues and dusts, quite apart from
the physical stresses on them. It is very
important to develop a hand-washing habit to
reduce contamination of yourself (mouth
touching, eating etc.). Washing your hands
regularly during the day, and washing them
thoroughly before leaving as part of your
"shutting down the shop" ritual, can help
reduce your overall exposure to chemicals
significantly. Use a mild, pH-balanced soap to
wash with. Some suggest avoiding antibacterial
soaps to avoid breeding bacteria resistant to
bactericides. Do not bite your nails but do
wash under them with a short, stiff-bristled
brush. Many people also use hand lotions of
various kinds after rinsing to replace skin
oils that have been removed.
For more information on Workshop safety from
Charles Lewton-Brian log onto:
http://www.ganoksin.com/borisat/safety.htm
((((((((((((((((((()))))))))))))))))))
<=> <=> Thank You for Reading <=> <=>
We are on the World Wide Web.
Visit us at http://www.BWSimon.com
A complete archive of back issues of E-BENCH is
located there.
Visit often, as we will be making changes to
our site, adding additional useful information
for bench jewelers.
<=> <=> SUBSCRIPTION INFORMATION <=> <=>
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< < < < < <> > > > > >
Information provided in this document is
provided ‘As Is’ without warranty of any kind,
either expressed or implied. This publication
is designed to provide accurate and
authoritative information concerning the
subject matter covered. It is provided with
the understanding that the author or publisher
is not engaged in rendering legal, accounting,
or other professional services. If legal
advice or other expert assistance is required,
the services of a competent professional person
should be sought.
< < < < < <> > > > > >
For editorial suggestions, comments, ideas
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Bradney W. Simon mailto:Brad@BWSimon.com
Copyrighted, 2003, BENCH MEDIA.
All rights reserved.
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< < < < < <> > > > > >