Today, many people are interested in jewelry making. However, choosing the right metal as the raw material for jewelry making is often a vexing problem for beginners. If you are also confused about this, this article may provide you with some useful guidance. Let’s read this article together to find the answer.
Prepare a jewelry saw
In the process of making jewelry, besides jewelry engraving, a large part of the operation is related to the cutting of jewelry parts. This is the time when you need to prepare a jewelry saw that is specially designed for fine cutting. How to choose a good jewelry saw? The most important thing is that it is able to achieve a quick cut of the metal without distorting it. The components of a jewelry saw are also simple: the blade and the frame. When you use a jewelry saw, you’d better use some professional lubricant to lubricate the blade. The more common lubricants include beeswax and burr lubricants. You can tool your own needs to choose.
Perform the necessary exercises
If you’re not sure that you’ll be able to make jewelry to perfection right off the bat, you’d better line up some necessary practice. Of course, you don’t need to practice on particularly precious metals, such as gold. The monetary cost of taking precious metals for extensive practice would be too high. After all, when you realize that the finished product that you produce ends up being difficult to achieve the results that you want, you’ll be remorseful as to why you didn’t do some more of the necessary practicing in the first place. If you don’t know what kind of metals are suitable for use as practice materials, I can recommend a few here. In fact, non-precious metals like copper and brass are perfect for practicing with. Even if you find out that you’ve made a major mistake, you can still just throw your failed sculpture in the trash without any pain.
Proper funding is necessary
When you’ve been practicing for a while, you probably have some level of understanding of jewelry making. And you are able to use various tools proficiently now. Since you are just starting out, you may not be able to purchase some very expensive jewelry making tools. So, you may feel that your tools have begun to gradually fail to meet your needs. At this time, you can purchase a jewelry engraving machine that is within your means. Compared to ordinary jewelry engraving tools, jewelry engraving machines are still more versatile and can meet the needs of the average engraving craftsman. So, in conclusion, you can choose some raw materials and tools that are within your ability when you learn the later stages of jewelry engraving.
Precautions for storing metals
You might be feeling strange, what is there to keep in mind when storing metal? But the truth is that storing metals does require some specialized knowledge. Let’s take precious metals like gold and silver as an example. They are soft materials, so a little carelessness may leave scratches on the surface of the metal or directly be twisted and deformed. However, most jewelers nowadays cover the surface of precious metals with a protective film to prevent accidental scratches on the metal. So before using the precious metal, you’d better not randomly tear off this layer of protective film, which will not only accelerate the speed of oxidation of the metal, there may be some scratches.
Some terminology you need to know
Within this circle of jewelry making, it is not unusual that there will be some specialized terminology. Understanding specialized knowledge not only helps you to broaden your knowledge, but also reduces the barriers when you communicate with professionals and shows your professionalism. Here I will introduce a few simple and more common terminologies. You can learn more and more complex terminology after you have a brief understanding of these terms.
1.Alloy: this is a word that we may see often in our daily life. It means a composite of two or more metals. Generally, alloys synthesize the advantages of its raw materials, such as high hardness or high melting point. There are also alloys that appear to synthesize the colors of the metals.
2.Annealing: Annealing, as it is called, is the process of heating a metal with a gun or other heating tool and then cooling the metal. Generally, the reason for annealing is that some metals are too hard to work with. After annealing, the metal will be softer and better for subsequent finishing.
3.Engraving: Engraving is the use of a hand-engraved tool or a specialized engraving machine to leave a specific pattern on the surface or inside of the jewelry.
4.Carat: Perhaps you have heard the word carat before to describe the number of grams in a diamond or gemstone. The larger the carat, the larger the stone, and accordingly the higher the value. But today I want to tell you that the word carat can also be used to describe the purity of gold or gold alloys. The higher the carat number, the higher the gold content.
5.Sterling Silver: Generally speaking, as long as the silver content of this material reaches 99.9%, then it can be regarded as pure silver. Like gold, pure gold is so soft that there is no such thing as 100% gold on the market. The soft texture of the metal, in fact, is not good for preservation, and for the subsequent processing is difficult.
7.Fire Spots: Black or gray spots appear on the surface of silver when it is heated, and these spots are called fire spots. This usually occurs because the metal used to make jewelry contains a certain amount of copper, which turns black when heated.
This article is an essential guide for beginners in jewellery making, explaining everything from shopping for tools to choosing metals for practice to the use of terminology. Learn these basics and you’ll be on your way to an exciting journey of creating unique jewellery!
