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Popular gemstones and cabochons:
Amazonite
Parrot Wing Understand mm sizes: Quick guide: 1" = 25mm 1/2"=13mm 1/4"=6.5mm Change can help: 1 quarter= 24.2 mm 1 dime= 18mm Both coins: 42mm |
Survival tips for Glass, Metal, and Photography ©2003, 2004, 2005 I've discovered glass fusing and metalsmithing recently enough in my life that the excruciating struggles and humiliating mistakes are still fresh in my mind. Since I've set up my own studio, I've developed some methods to accomplish some of these processes more accurately. This page is divided into tips for beginning metalsmiths, and tips for beginning and intermediate glass fusers. (Glass fusers might also want to check out my answers to Frequently Asked Questions about Glass; my best advice is in my Surefire Handbook.) I will be changing the information on this page on a regular basis, so check back for new tips. And meanwhile, beginning metalsmiths can also find a huge wealth of information at the free website: http://www.ganoksin.com/ (I don't have this link set up yet, so you can just highlight it, then copy and paste it into your web address area). As the information below was gleaned out of my own painful experience, this page's contents are copyrighted. You have my permission to print off this info for your own personal use, but please respect the copyright and don't copy it for others. Direct them to this website instead. All persons using the information on this website are bound by the liability disclaimer at the bottom of this page. New: Basic Digital Photography Tips for Small Items (Click on the turquoise titles) What features and settings your digital camera needs to take decent stone and jewelry photographs Metalsmithing Bench Tips Click on the turquoise titles to go to the topic of your choice. How to Remove Tarnish from Finished Pieces How to Drill Accurate Holes in Metal Polishing Wars: How to keep a good gleam from going bad. Using a Tumbler to get a high polish Hate Polishing? Alternate ways to treat the surface of silver and gold: coming soon How to Drill Accurate Holes in Glass or Stone How to Make Glass Test Sheets of Dichroic Colors Other ideas for dichroic glass The Importance of Keeping records
New: Important features and settings a digital camera should have, to take photos of small items I take all the photos on this website, and I keep learning more every day. In terms of a digital camera, the general rule of thumb is to buy the best camera you can afford. Look for a top brand name that offers good optics--a high-quality lens translates into crisp, beautiful pictures. Nikon, Canon, and Olympus are the big three that I'm familiar with. I use a Nikon Coolpix 5000 (already outdated but still perfectly useable); my husband has a professional Nikon with removable lenses; and I have friends who swear by Canons. Whichever brand you buy, make sure the model you choose has a macro lens in it that will allow you to shoot really close up. That's the most important thing, next to optical quality. If you're going to be photographing small items on a regular basis, then I think it's crucial to buy a digital camera that allows you to program different camera settings. For example, I can enter into my camera a special program of settings (focus, exposure, shutter speed, etc.) that I use just for my studio work. When I'm on vacation or shooting people, I can switch the program to automatic. In the studio, I set up the camera program with: macro (short-range) focus, spot metering (which measures how much light the camera takes in--I choose spot when my subject is very small, but you might want to average the amount of light from the entire field of view, instead), and a "fine" resolution. I don't shoot "tif" or uncompressed images because their file size takes too long to load and download. (more about tif later). This program allows me to shoot pretty finely-resolved compressed (.jpg) images. I can later lessen the resolution for e-mailing or uploading to the web, but I still have enough pixel information to enable me to print nice photos when I want. I don't worry about a flash attachment, because I hardly ever use the flash--I use outside lighting.
The absolutely best thing I've learned, and that just
recently, is that my photos will turn out with more accurate color if I set the
white balance first. In my Nikon, it's an option called "white balance preset,"
and what you do is set up the camera and lighting exactly as you will be
shooting in, then turn on the white balance preset. You aim the camera at a
perfectly white
My digital photography setup 1) Shooting in a white-walled small room (I use a former laundry room) is great because the white walls act as reflectors of your light. Having a couple of white posterboards on hand to act as reflectors works just as well. Photographing items, or even editing photos on your computer, in a room with strong-colored walls, will actually distort the colors of your finished photo. 2) However you set up your camera, before you shoot, move around and look at it: The lens MUST be parallel to the surface of your subject--even the tiniest angle will cause something to be out of focus.
3) You have to keep the camera steady, especially if you're
shooting with slow shutter speeds typical in a studio situation. I used to
stubbornly hand-hold the camera, but my photos have improved (and so has my
temper) with the purchase of two important things: In situations where I don't use the Cloud Dome (I shoot most of my jewelry--necklaces and earrings--hanging from a closet rod with a sheet of grey paper in the background), I mount the camera on my monopod (a tripod with only one leg). I have one that I love (made in Italy by a subsidiary of Bogen) because it has a removable camera mount and I can also adjust the camera at any angle, and, of course, I can adjust the height. It really adds stability under slow shutter speeds.
I understand that there are other professional photography
setups, one, in particular mounts your camera overhead and has moveable lights
on either side of a central place to put the item being photographed. This
sounds like a good setup as well. I started out with plexiglass scraps, sheer
draperies, and grey paper. As I got into it more and could afford better
equipment, I moved up. But I still could take decent photographs with a
dimestore setup, as long as I have a good camera. I don't know much computer jargon, so I'll explain this in English. Basically, there is so much information in a single digital color photograph that has high resolution (i.e., shows lots of detail), that computer geeks and photographers got together and developed a way to try and select the most important information in a digital photo, keep that, and "compress" the rest of the information down so as to make the file size of that photo smaller and easier for a computer or website to handle. The resulting compressed photo file is called .jpg, or "Jay-peg." All of my photos on this website are .jpg photos--they can be big or small, but they're relatively easy for a typical computer to upload, download, and store. The other common way to store the information in a digital photo is as a .tif ("tiff") file. In this type of file, all the digital information remains uncompressed, so nothing is lost when you save the photo on your computer. This is great for photographers who want to print their photos--that's the format where you want to have as much information as possible so that your pictures emerge from the printer sharp and detailed, and your images don't fall apart when you print them as large format photos. The problem is that the same camera card that I can use to take 128 .jpg photos, might hold only a dozen or so .tif photos, because the uncompressed .tifs take up so much file space (this also applies to storing them on your hard drive). And it takes Forever to transfer these .tifs because the files are so large. Even "fine" .jpgs load much quicker. But the compression of a .jpg photo also creates a big disadvantage--every single time you save a .jpg photo, the mere act of saving it makes it compress a little more, so every time you save that photo on your computer (like after you've changed its orientation, or cropped it, or altered the colors), you're actually losing information, information that you can't get back. In my case, I can't risk this because I do some extensive editing of my photos to make their colors and shadings as accurate as possible. So this is the method that works for me (professional digital photographers might have a better one, but I'm an artist and this is what I can understand and use best): When it's time to download my photos from my camera card to my computer, I use the "move" command, which transfers them into a file that I have set up for them. Then, I view all the photos as a slide show (which provides the biggest image on my computer screen), and pick the ones that I want to use for my website. I open a selected photo in my photo editing software (Photoshop), and the VERY FIRST thing I do is to use the "save as" option to save that .jpg photo as a tif. That uncompresses it. Then I do all my editing when the photo is uncompressed (in tif), because I can save my changes whenever I want to and no information will get lost. When the photo is exactly as I want it, I use the "save as" option again and save a copy of it as a .jpg file, which is what I post to my website. (If your computer has the space, I suggest saving your finished photo as a .tif file first (for printing purposes), then size it down to make a smaller image for the web and do "save as" a .jpg file.) This way, I can keep lots of photos on file, but I uncompress ONLY the file that I want to work with, the best images of all.
A good photography rule for the web that
I learned from eBay is to shoot on a plain background and, in the case of web
photos, crop so that there's not a lot of empty space around your item. This
makes it easier to see on a computer screen. Obviously, you might be more
concerned with a background if you're doing a photo of an artistic jewelry
design, but I caution you not to let the background interfere with, or distract
from, the view of the piece. Most image sizes for the web are about 300 x 400
pixels; the largest images I have on this website are 650 pixels high (which
just fits on most computer screens), but I find that an excellent view of a
stone can be provided by an image that's 450 to 500 pixels high and 450 to 700
pixels wide. Remember that the fewer pixels you have in a web photo, the quicker
it will load. I try to find a happy medium between providing photos that show
details when their thumbnails are enlarged, and providing web pages that
download within a person's lifetime. Of course, for print photography, you want
to go for the maximum image size possible, because that's what provides the most
detail in a printed photo. So, I often size down a .tif photo for e-mailing, set
its size to 300 x 400 pixels or thereabouts, and name it: [name] small.jpg,
so I know that those are photos just for the internet.
Bench Advice for the New Metalsmith
How to Remove Tarnish from Finished Pieces As every metalsmith--and jewelry owner--knows, silver is a wonderful metal, but its major drawback is its tendency to tarnish over time. And nothing is more daunting than having to restore the shine to a tarnished piece, especially if it's set with gemstones, or has fine detail. Here is a great solution to the problem, a "chemical" treatment requiring only household ingredients: Tarnish Remover Recipe
1-2 cups warm water, preferably distilled You should see bubbles beginning to form on the surface of the silver. Allow the jewelry to remain in place for about 10 minutes, then remove, rinse, and, if necessary, wash with a soft cloth and liquid Dial or dish soap. Rubbing with the soft soapy cloth should remove any remaining tarnish. Rinse and buff dry. If tarnish still remains, mix up a completely fresh recipe and repeat. Heavily tarnished pieces might require several washings, and possibly longer soaks. This approach is great because it does not appear to have any effect on gemstones. I have tried it on items set with diamonds, faceted stones such as garnets and tourmalines, and even tried it on pieces set with malachite, onyx, even pearls--no problem. However, don't take this as an automatic guarantee. If your jewelry piece has pearls, coral, opal, turquoise or other soft materials in it, try experimenting with a corner first, as a test. Watch the item carefully. In the case of these softer stones, if the tarnish appears to be lifting off sooner than 10 minutes, then take the piece out and rinse it off to minimize the stone's exposure to the chemical reaction. Just a reminder--this approach will only remove the discoloration of tarnish. You might still need to polish the piece using traditional methods if you want to restore a high shine to its surface.
To keep a polished silver item from tarnishing:
Store it in a small, airtight ziplock plastic bag, preferably with a strip of
anti-tarnish paper available from jewelry supply stores. If you provide a
storage bag and anti-tarnish strip with each piece you sell, your customers will
love you! How to Drill Accurate Holes in Metal For a beginning metalsmith, drilling a hole exactly where you want it isn't as easy as it looks. Here are some tips to get it right: 1. Decide where you want your hole and mark it with an ultra-fine felt tip pen or a scribe. 2. Use a small carpenter's punch to press down on the mark and make a dent in the metal. You want to make a dent deep enough so that the drill bit will stay in it, but not so deep that it distorts the surface around it. The thicker the metal, the harder you can press. 3. If you have trouble with the drill bit wandering off and scratching your metal, you can mask the area around the dent with electrical tape. 4. Always start with a much smaller drill bit than the one you need. That way, if your hole is slightly off-center, you can catch and correct it. 5. Place the metal on your workbench and, while holding the drill, rest both hands on the surface of the workbench and cup both hands around the metal. Brace your hand with the drill against your other hand. I do this by pushing the little fingers of my right and left hand against each other. I grasp the drill in my dominant hand and anchor the metal with my other hand. With your hands locked together this way, you minimize the chance that the drill will drift off the hole and get away from where you want it. If you need to, move your bench light so that you can see better. 6. Once you've braced your hands together, gently place the drill bit into the dent, position the drill until it's upright (perpendicular to the surface of the metal). Tense the muscles in your hand to prepare yourself to keep pressure straight down, and drill the hole. You don't have to go full speed. Go relatively slowly until you see that the bit is well into the metal. If you sense the bit beginning to wander, lift up! Go back, find the right spot, and begin to drill again. 7. Once you've drilled the small hole, check it to see if it's in the right place. To check whether a hole is properly centered, you can measure it, of course. But another trick that I do is to turn the piece upside down and look at it that way. If the hole is off-center, it should show up then. Another trick is to get up, walk around, and then come back and look at the piece afresh. Your eyes will be better suited to pick out errors in placement. 8. If the hole is correctly positioned, load the bit you actually want to use. This time, drilling the final hole is a breeze because the small hole is a perfect guide for it. 9. If your small hole is not exactly in the right place, choose an intermediate drill bit, position it mostly in the small hole, but pressing slightly towards where it really should be. Don't press too hard--you'll break the bit. Imagine that the drill bit is a tiny round saw--your goal is to "scrape" and extend one side of the little hole. By placing gentle pressure in that direction, with practice, you can create a tiny "oval," part of which opens over the exact location of the desired site. With your final drill bit and a bit of care, you should be able to get the final hole placed where it belongs. 10. Complete your drilling, and clean up burs on the emerging side, and you're done! Polishing Wars: How to keep a good gleam from going bad. Achieving a high polish on the surface of silver can be a real trick. Here are several tips to help get you faster, better results: 1. Don't scratch it beforehand. Whenever you can, use masking tape to cover and protect the areas of your piece that might get scratched as you work. Also tape areas that might get damaged by a skittering drill bit or a wayward file stroke. You can also use electrical tape, but it's harder to clean off afterwards. 2. Clean off polishing tools as you work. If the surface of your polishing buff develops a metallic sheen, or if you're using a 3M colored polishing wheel and it turns black, it means that metal has built up on the buff or wheel. At that point, you're no longer polishing, you're rubbing the metal you took off back into the metal you want to clean. Here's how to avoid this: ---When using a polishing buff: If your buff is mounted on a hand-held tool like a motorized flex shaft, buy a small plastic brush like that used for brushing suede shoes. With a permanent marker, label one end of the brush "R" (rouge) and the other W (white diamond) or whatever polishing compound you use. Or, you can use old, clean toothbrushes (mark them, too). As you polish, when you notice your buff's surface is beginning to gleam from accumulated metal, touch the buff lightly for a couple of seconds (while it's moving) to the tops of the bristles of the plastic shoebrush. Stop the motor and check the buff. Repeat until the metallic sheen is gone. Resume polishing and repeat this process whenever metal builds up again. For larger buffing wheels mounted on a bigger machine, check the buff every few minutes by turning off the motor and examining it. Or, to save time, you can just touch a plastic brush to the wheel every 2-5 minutes or so as you're working. Just make sure that you have a different cleaning brush for each type of polishing compound that you use. -----When using silicone or rubber polishing wheels (these come in different colors): When the surface of these wheels turns a deep black, it's time to stop and clean it off. Plastic brushes eat up these wheels too quickly, so keep a paper towel nearby. I find that the rougher the surface of the towel, the better. (Smooth institutional restroom towels won't work). Grasp the paper towel firmly with NO loose ends near your polishing wheel: If you don't hold the towel right, it will get caught in the spinning wheel, so be careful. Press the running wheel against the towel until the black comes off and the color is revealed. You might try wrapping the towel around your thumbnail and holding that against the wheel--the hard surface behind the rough towel will clean the wheel faster. As the towel gets black, carefully move to a different portion of the towel. Do this whenever your polishing wheel goes black, and your polishing efforts will become much more efficient. 3. Use a tumbler for getting that final high polish. Big jewelry manufacturers use electric tumblers to finish cast jewelry. They work on the same principle as lapidary tumblers for polishing stones. If you invest a lot of time in bringing a high polish to your work, you might want to consider investing in a small jewelry tumbler. Jewelry catalogs can sell everything you need for under $150, which can save you dozens of hours of precious time. Tumblers are the best and safest way to polish chains. Professional tumbling machines use special polishing media, but for the home studio, a small tumbler with a rubber container filled with stainless steel shot works just fine. I use shot that is composed of three different shapes to get into small crevices of my work. Buy 10 lbs. of shot--it's really not all that much, and will fill two containers. I use a tumbling machine that holds two canisters that I can run at the same time. If you already own a lapidary tumbler, all you'll need are rubber containers and stainless steel shot. Here's an important note: The tumbler works like a burnisher. It won't remove scratches, nicks, or other surface imperfections. So, you'll have to get rid of those beforehand. I find that removing scratches, then polishing with white diamond, then washing the piece completely before tumbling, gets me the best results. I recommend tumbling before you set any stones in your piece. Here's how to set up the tumbler: a. Fill the tumbling container half-full with shot, then put in your piece. If you have several pieces, alternate loading shot and the pieces until the container is 2/3 to 3/4 full. Avoid loading very fine chains because they will end up hopelessly tangled. b. Pour in lukewarm water until the shot is covered, plus about 1/4 to 1/2" more water. c. Add a squirt of Dial liquid hand soap or similar liquid detergent. d. Close up the container tightly and turn it on its side. If water leaks out, you need to close it even tighter. e. Completely dry off the container. Wet surfaces will slip, not rotate. f. Place the container on the machine and turn it on. g. Tumble for 1 hour, then check your pieces. A 2-hour tumble is usually sufficient to bring out a dazzling shine. h. When the tumbling is finished, go to the sink and carefully pour out the contents into a wire mesh colander (with very tiny holes). Remove and rinse your pieces, then thoroughly rinse the shot and the container. i. Slowly pour the shot out onto a towel to air dry. Then, gather up the edges of the towel and return the dry shot to the dry container for storage.
Hate Polishing? Alternate ways to treat the surface of silver and gold Here's a quick list of ideas of how you can treat the surface of silver and gold to get a professional result without lots of polishing: To come
Bench Advice for the Glass Fuser
What's the best way to
drill holes in Stone or Glass?
If you are not used
to drilling, you might want to put a small extra sheet of plastic under the
stone or glass piece at first, to keep you from drilling a hole in the tray!
I actually use a plastic phone jack wall plate because that has a couple of
small holes in it already, so when the drill goes all the way through the stone,
it will next hit the hole in the plastic plate and I can stop the drill before
puncturing the tray underneath.
4.
I slowly bring the running drill bit down to the stone and apply very gentle
pressure for maybe about five seconds. Then I lift the drill bit up slightly so
that
the surrounding water can rinse off the diamond coating and cool the bit. A
second or two later, I bear gently down again, then lift up, then press gently
but firmly down, slowly and gradually working my way through the stone.
Depending on the hardness of the stone, it may take you about three minutes
to get all the way through the stone, glass even longer. You Have To Be Patient. You might want to
consider investing in earplugs or ear protectors because
it's a very noisy process.
If you're drilling stone, there's no guarantee that it won't
break even if you do this method, because some stones may contain
internal fracture lines that will break the stone apart with the pressure of a
drill. So you should decide at the start whether you want to risk the stone or
not.
I'd suggest practicing on cheaper, throwaway stones at first. And, of course,
stay away from drilling in "cracked" areas of the stone.
The Scoop on Dichroic Glass
Before you buy or fuse dichroic glass, there are some important things you need
to know. First, make sure the C.O.E. is the same as that of your other fuseable glass,
because you'll want to fuse them together.
Another thing you need to know about fused dichroic glass is that the same color
will look different, depending on whether you fuse it face up with the dichroic coating
exposed to heat, or protected from the heat. When the dichroic surface is
exposed directly to the heat, the result is a satiny, almost matte, texture that
for the most part is opaque. However, if the dichroic coating is protected
by the heat, either by being covered with a layer of clear glass, or by being
turned face down (if it's on clear glass), the dichroic effect after fusing
will look smooth and sparkly, and in many cases, it will appear more transparent,
allowing you to see the colors of any glass underneath. How to tell what side of the glass the dichroic coating is on:
Sometimes, with dichroic coated clear glass, it's hard to see which side the
dichroic coating is on. There are some tricks to this. If you can't tell under
strong light (like a halogen bulb), go to a place where you have diffuse, not
strong, natural light and flip the piece over and back, and change its angle as
you're looking at it. The dichroic coating should show up almost like the
reflections off the back of a piece of aluminum foil, with the color intense and flat. The
light reflecting off of the uncoated side will look just like light reflecting
off of glass. Another way of telling is to stand a pencil or a pen
on end right on the glass surface. If you're touching the dichroic surface, the
reflection of the pencil point and the pencil itself will meet. But if you are
touching the glass side, the reflection will not meet the pencil, but
will look as though it is floating in water, a little ways away. If it's any
consolation, I've been doing this for years and sometimes I still get them
wrong. Your last resort should be to make a tiny mark with a permanent black
marker on the surface. Such marks are difficult to rub off of dichroic as
opposed to clear glass.
Dichroic glass is also sold with the dichroic coating on black glass. This is
very useful for fusers who are not planning to layer their dichroic glass or who
like the effect of having each dichroic piece have a black border, which usually
shows up after fusing. If you're working on a limited budget however, keep in
mind that you can achieve much the same effect by buying only clear dichroic
class and then fusing it to a piece of black stained glass. Clear dichroic also
looks great fused to deep cobalt or periwinkle opal glass.
Once you've got a handle on how the dichroic glass is going to behave in your
kiln, you can start combining it with your other glass and layering it to create
special effects. Again, if you're going to make a big piece using dichroic
glass, I'd suggest testing the color combinations on a small scale first. One
important rule of thumb is: Never layer two dichroic surfaces facing each
other. The metal will cause them to repel each other. The doyenne of dichroic
glass, Shirley Webster, says that the exception to this rule is when you have
multiple layers of glass and are going for special effects. In that case, she
says, the touching dichroic surfaces will crack and slide past each other, and
can result in an interesting effect. But I wouldn't try it for normal use. This
also means that dichroic coatings and iridescent coatings will repel each other:
I've tried to texture fuse dots of dichroic glass onto iridescent glass. And
after the firing was over the dots just slid off.
Don't forget to keep records! So that's the scoop on dichroic glass. Go forth and enjoy! Return to top of this page. Return to FAQs Glass page.
Liability disclaimer: Judith Kiriazis and Heart of Stone Studio shall have neither responsibility nor liability to any person or entity with respect to loss, injury, or damage caused or alleged to be caused, directly or indirectly, by the information contained in these pages. If you do not wish to be bound by these restrictions, please do not download, copy, or use the information in these pages.
If you're new to fusing, or would like to have a book containing all the pertinent information you'll need to fuse, check out my Surefire Handbook.
If you'd like to see how well I follow my own advice,
check out my original fused glass and metal designs.
These pages are authored by Dr. Judith Kiriazis, who retains ownership of
all information in them. Printing of this page for personal reference, one time
use, is permitted. Any other reproduction is expressly prohibited without
written consent of the author.
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Copyright © 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009
Heart of Stone Studio Gemstones
Cabochons
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