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My store is at store.turtleshoard.com (finally starting to migrate off of etsy and it feels good).
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Sep 6, 2023 07:16
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Soul Dentist posted:Completely forgot to mention in my breakdown but I spend a significant amount of time working on this: My sisma is my pride and joy. I love that thing to death haha. Lasers are so useful and that one is an absolute workhorse.
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Sep 6, 2023 07:57
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I envy those things. I don't even do thst kind of jewelry work and I want one. I like the Leica stereo head they have too.
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Sep 6, 2023 08:04
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Claes Oldenburger posted:My sisma is my pride and joy. I love that thing to death haha. Lasers are so useful and that one is an absolute workhorse. Jealous! I'll probably never own anything where instead of listing a price online it just says "Call a Representative for a Quote Today!"
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Sep 6, 2023 10:28
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Wooaah, that thing is cool as hell  So, are the burns from metal heating up near the laser point or just lasering your own finger?
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Sep 6, 2023 10:49
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Xun posted:So, are the burns from metal heating up near the laser point or just lasering your own finger? Yes, but also when you angle a piece the wrong way instead of interacting with the metal it's polished enough to act as a mirror and just bounce the laser onto your hand
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Sep 6, 2023 10:56
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Yes it is very much a longer term business loan situation. I definitely couldn’t afford one cash, they’re the price of a new car. I do enough casting that the ability to zap what would have been a problematic pit in the metal still feels like magic!
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Sep 6, 2023 14:48
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Scarodactyl posted:My store is at store.turtleshoard.com (finally starting to migrate off of etsy and it feels good). Got it bookmarked for the future  I really like the soft pink those window shards have. I need to check finances but I could see making several sets of dice out of those.
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Sep 6, 2023 21:17
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Also question for jewelers, what kind of stuff are you guys thinking about when setting gems? I'm a hobby cutter and I kinda wonder how actually "usable" the stuff I make actually are wrt to size, shape, girdle thickness, idk what else
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Sep 6, 2023 21:30
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Scarodactyl posted:My store is at store.turtleshoard.com (finally starting to migrate off of etsy and it feels good). I’m looking to start an etsy shop soon to dip my toe into selling some of the jewelry I make online. Is etsy still a reasonable choice for people who are just getting started or is it completely unworkable? I don’t know that I have the strength of will to set up a whole website and shopify account from the jump, but if that’s what it takes in 2023, I’d rather find out now than later.
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Sep 7, 2023 02:22
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It's not totally terrible and it can be nice to have their market/network effects. That said it's been in steady decline since they went public, very metric-based. It is missing features that really should be there. They are increasingly doing shady things like immediately refunding customers for things they shouldn't or offering minimal to no coverage for lost packages sent via their in-house international shipping. The biggest thing for me though is that at this point I'm driving almost all of my own traffic, so I'm paying Etsy large fees mostly for a shop setup that's less feature-rich and flexible than shopify which isn't s great value.
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Sep 7, 2023 02:31
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I was wondering if anyone here could give me an idea what these neat rocks are. My mother-in-laws cousin had a huge collection and she brought over these because she thought they were neat (they are). Just curious what we have!  
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Sep 18, 2023 00:17
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The first one looks like amazonite--is the color a bit greener in person? Third one, likely chalcopyrite (the iridescent crystals) and sphalerite on calcite. Do the dark crystals have a red flash when strongly lit? Middle one, I dunno maybe barite. Is it very dense?
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Sep 18, 2023 05:19
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Xun posted:Also question for jewelers, what kind of stuff are you guys thinking about when setting gems? I'm a hobby cutter and I kinda wonder how actually "usable" the stuff I make actually are wrt to size, shape, girdle thickness, idk what else Super late reply, so I hope it still helps. It really depends on the context of the piece and who you're selling to. My day job is at a trade shop with a retail space. Generally, we're looking for stones that have a girdle that isn't particularly chunky, but also not sliver thin like an old diamond. It can sometimes be a pain if the pavilion is super deep. Other than that, we're looking for evenness of cut, how well the color of the stone comes through, that kind of thing. For shape, we get weird for some of our more statement-y stock pieces. It's nice to try and design around something other than the standbys (RBC, oval, princess, pear, etc.). That said, the majority of our stuff uses pretty standard stones. For personal projects, I'm generally happy to design around almost any stone if it jumps out at me. It seems like most of my coworkers are in a similar place.
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Sep 27, 2023 02:50
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I've been cutting Halloween themed gems this month. Here are the first five. Coffin cut black moissanite  A Castlevania 'Bloody Tear' in czochralski ruby  A grinning skull in grey YAG  A pumpkin in orange lithium tantalate  And a Psycho knife in silver sunstone
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Oct 16, 2023 21:34
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Scarodactyl posted:I've been cutting Halloween themed gems this month. Here are the first five. I have never seen silver stunstone; that's an amazing flash! I also really like the ruby; I don't have any non-rough ruby jewelry because I never quite like the color. I love that one, though. Lots of depth to it. The skull is just subtle enough to go unnoticed. Excellent.
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Oct 16, 2023 22:12
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Now that I’ve got a year or so of practice in silversmithing, I’d like to learn how to do some basic engraving. Unfortunately, I have no idea where to start. Are there non-electric hand-tools I should be using, or should I be using electric stuff from the start? I use a regular plug-in Dremel rotary for my bench work and I’m not sure if that’s good for engraving, or if I need some other specific brand for jewelers. Along the same lines, what’s that little automatic hammer-like hand tool jewelers use to do bezels quickly? I’ve been doing them with little wooden bezel rollers/pushers and a hammer, but I know that has its limits, especially with softer stones. I know there’s an electric tool jewelers use to set bezels with a little automatic hammering motion, but I don’t know what the tool is called or even how to describe it very well. Any idea what this might be?
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Oct 23, 2023 19:18
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I think what you need is an air graver, but I am not an expert.
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Oct 23, 2023 19:27
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Air or pulse graver, also am not an expert. Gravers use a jackhammer motion to drive the tool, not a rotary motion, so a Dremel is out.
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Oct 23, 2023 22:01
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  A zombie in 'zombie garnet', a weird type of laser YAG with a yellow-gold base and green fluorescence. Under UV it gets a weird wireframe look.
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Oct 24, 2023 04:43
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Is this the place to talk about resetting existing jewelry? I have a white gold channel set diamond anniversary band. I want to have it reset with alexandrite. The current ring is from an independent jeweler but has no grading; the stones are about 2mm each and eye clear, but probably crap. I know that alexandrite is ridiculously expensive. Can the existing band just be reset, and can I use half the existing stones and half alexandrite? And, what would the whole thing be expected to cost? Labor, about six 2mm lab created alexandrites, and resetting about 6 existing stones? My local jeweler quoted over $1500 and said it would cost less to just have it done from scratch. That might be true! But I trust goons. Additionally, I worked at a department store many years ago and bought a lot of jewelry on clearance with the employee discount. I don't wear any of it. It's all low quality stones, but the gold is real. Is it worth the time and effort of anyone involved to sell them off and apply the value to the new custom piece?
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Oct 25, 2023 22:02
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Can't quote a price but opening and unsetting a channel, then resetting it with new stones, is probably more time consuming than casting a ring and setting it new. Cleaning, cutting channel walls, all the tool marks, etc. would be a pain, not to mention the jeweler is probably expecting somebody to have performed something shady as a shortcut that could (perhaps literally) blow up in their face. It's always the last jeweler lol
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Oct 25, 2023 22:31
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I am not in the trade (I just keep an eye on the thread because I got a college degree in jewelry) but I would say the pile of gold depends on it's purity and weight for whether it's worth your time. Are we taking 10k? 14k? 18k? Is it a couple of rings or earrings or a big pile of stuff? Precious metal values are calculated by weight and how much of that weight is in the actual gold/silver versus the other alloy metals. There are online calculators that can give you an idea of what the full melt value of your jewelry may be if you can weigh it, but you'll have to take the number with a grain of salt, as the stones add weight and skew the results some. And of course shops offer a bit under the spot price as they need to make their profit as well. If you decide to try this I'll tell you now a troy ounce is a different weight than a regular ounce like you see on a package of food; troy ounces are slightly heavier but it's one of the traditional measurements of jewelry and precious metals. Most calculators I've seen do have options with more normal units of measure you may have on a kitchen scale, like grams.
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Oct 26, 2023 01:12
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Nae posted:Now that I’ve got a year or so of practice in silversmithing, I’d like to learn how to do some basic engraving. Unfortunately, I have no idea where to start. Are there non-electric hand-tools I should be using, or should I be using electric stuff from the start? I use a regular plug-in Dremel rotary for my bench work and I’m not sure if that’s good for engraving, or if I need some other specific brand for jewelers. People are correct in that what you're talking about is an air graver. Common brands are Lindsay Air Graver/GRS Gravermach/Pulsegraver. The lindsay is really great for engraving but lacks the power for setting. Pulsegravers apparently have enough power for setting and work well enough for engraving, GRS is the same. There is a cheaper option for setting bezels, you can get setting hammers that fit into rotary tools (like a foredom flexshaft) that will provide a hammering action strong enough for setting.
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Oct 28, 2023 07:39
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I use a Gravermax at work, and other people have that or a Pulsegraver. I find the Pulsegraver to be weedly and weak, but you don't need a compressed air setup since it's electrically (pulse) powered
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Oct 28, 2023 13:00
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Thanks so much for the advice, everybody! Some budget changes mean I don’t get to run out and buy any tools any time soon (thanks, home renovations…) but I’m glad to know what I need when I need it. Having said that, I really wish I’d gotten a whole Foredom rotary flexshaft setup from the beginning, because I’m using a standard Dremel with the Dremel bland flex shaft and it’s becoming clear that none of the cool stuff like setting hammers exists for it. 
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Oct 28, 2023 22:51
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Soul Dentist posted:I use a Gravermax at work, and other people have that or a Pulsegraver. I find the Pulsegraver to be weedly and weak, but you don't need a compressed air setup since it's electrically (pulse) powered That's good to know, I love my Lindsay but it's clear that the smooth action is where it excels, not power haha. I'm going to do an engraving class in Phoenix with Jeff Parke in a few weeks, I did one last year and had a great time. Testing out a Lindsay palmcontrol was wild. For engraving I understand why he loves it so much!
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Oct 30, 2023 18:40
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Some interesting info on a project for everyone. Arya is a gentleman who's working on developing/redeveloping production of a lot of the "lost" synthetic colors. Djeva was one of the few remaining places that made a very wide range of synthetic colors but they went out of business a few years ago. https://www.reddit.com/r/Shinypreci...hare&utm_term=1
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Oct 31, 2023 16:41
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On the one hand I am super pumped, he has some amazing stuff lined up. On the other hand this is the first one he had grown. It was supposed to be a vivid cobalt green.  Should cut some nice golden stones though! This new company he's working with seems more reliable anyway.
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Oct 31, 2023 18:39
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Scarodactyl posted:On the one hand I am super pumped, he has some amazing stuff lined up. OOHHHHHH preetttyyy let me know when you get some pieces cut off of that.
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Oct 31, 2023 19:45
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Scarodactyl posted:On the one hand I am super pumped, he has some amazing stuff lined up. Looks so good! I love all this wizardry going on to attempt to make particular crystal colours. Looking forward to seeing where it goes!
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Oct 31, 2023 22:05
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By the way dicecutter extraordinaire Hedron Rockworks cut one of our christmas garnets and it came out amazing! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zf3iZLt0_qs
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Oct 31, 2023 23:28
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Scarodactyl posted:By the way dicecutter extraordinaire Hedron Rockworks cut one of our christmas garnets and it came out amazing! I really need to video/document when I cut up that piece of laser sapphire I got off of you. It's going to be a D20 in the end. Edit: Watched his video in it's entirety. Coming from the technical polishing world (stuff for 500x microscopy on one end all the way up to electron microscopes) It always amazes me how SLOW people are running their laps. It does defiantly gets the job done. But it's also REALLY hard on some of the laps and takes way longer. That sound the 600 grit topper lap made I probably visibly cringed out of reflex. Could hear the diamonds crushing in the clip. More zoom zoom! shalafi4 fucked around with this message at 23:53 on Oct 31, 2023 |
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Oct 31, 2023 23:37
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Hell yeah I want to see that.
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Oct 31, 2023 23:52
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Scarodactyl posted:Hell yeah I want to see that. I need to make some dops to be able to really handle it first. That and for the numbers, I"m not planning on sandblasting them in. They'll be cut into it.  I have an essentially infinite supply of diamond dental burrs from our reject bin at work to use with a dental handpiece to cut them in.
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Oct 31, 2023 23:57
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shalafi4 posted:I really need to video/document when I cut up that piece of laser sapphire I got off of you. It's going to be a D20 in the end. This makes me happy, I thought it would be worse on them running them faster but I do it anyways
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Nov 1, 2023 01:17
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For polishing it is necessary to run them slow. Otherwise I typically run at max unless I'm cutting a real small facet.
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Nov 1, 2023 01:26
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Claes Oldenburger posted:This makes me happy, I thought it would be worse on them running them faster but I do it anyways For diamond electroplated laps? There are only a tiny handful of faceting machines that can even run a lap as fast as the diamond "wants" to. lowest end speed wise plated diamond wants to run cutting ceramics is about 4000 Surface Feet per Minute (ie how much lap passes under the stone per minute) for an 8inch lap the very edge of it hits that 4000 SFM at ~1900 RPM. the outer edge of a 6 in lap it's 2500 RPM Scarodactyl posted:For polishing it is necessary to run them slow. Otherwise I typically run at max unless I'm cutting a real small facet. eehhh not really? again from the technical polishing end of things? we'd polish Yittria, tungsten carbide and Boron nitride in the 1000~1600 RPM range on a 8in lap. Biggest thing is keeping it wet enough (oil or applicable coolant) to keep clearing the polished material off. I'll usually run my 6" darkside lap at 950 or so. It feels like it wants to run faster than that but there's a "do not exceed 1k rpm" on it's label.
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Nov 1, 2023 04:26
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I typically use a thin diastik smear with minimal wd40 and low speeds where the grip feels stronger and it generally works pretty quickly once the orientation is dialled in--but it's also just how I have been taught and I know polishing techniques are highly varied. I'm using a BA5T for most of my polishing, I haven't tried a darkside yet.
Scarodactyl fucked around with this message at 09:50 on Nov 1, 2023 |
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Nov 1, 2023 08:54
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Scarodactyl posted:I typically use a thin diastik smear with minimal wd40 and low speeds where the grip feels stronger and it generally works pretty quickly once the orientation is dialled in--but it's also just how I have been taught and I know polishing techniques are highly varied. I'm using a BA5T for most of my polishing, I haven't tried a darkside yet. Yup from what I've noticed that "low and slow" is how lapidary stuff is taught. (and totally works) It's just weird for me coming from technical polishing over to lapidary world. The other thing that makes me internally chuckle. People who go spouting over doing a 100k polish. (0~0.5 micron diamond) In technical world, if you're going to be going down to SEM part levels that 100k is the last pre-polish step. 
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Nov 1, 2023 16:31
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