I hope to be . . .able to make solder leap across the biggest gap
and make big diamonds set themselves and yield to my will.
Hi Kevin;
No offense, but I have been a jeweler 30 years, and here’s what I’ve
learned:
Solder doesn’t jump across gaps. You either plug them with metal,
then solder, or don’t have them in the first place.
Big diamonds are much easier to set than small ones, easier to
see how they fit the setting, harder to break, and easier to find
when you drop them on the floor. Too bad we can’t afford to learn on
the big ones first.
Nothing yields to your will. The secret is to align your will to
that of the universe, if you wish to call it that. At the very
least, have your will, just know that it is irrelevant.
Kevin, it sounds like you’ve found a “diamond in the rough” in your
apprentice. Kudos to you for realizing how far ahead of the
apprentice you will always stay. Many operators lose the prospect of
a good apprentice over worrying about him/her becoming “The
Competition.”
I’ve found over the years that competition isn’t a bad thing. It is
what makes us strive to be better. That is, unless one is the type
to “badmouth” to reduce the competition instead of letting the work
speak for itself. The recent thread about one shop touting their die
struck vs. cast (not casted, heh heh) item as superior is a prime
example. The customers of both of those places will not likely
understand the difference, probably give up in confusion, and find a
third party that has no affiliation with the feud, and the first two
businesses will suffer the loss together.
Hey soul sounds like we agree there is no substitut for doing it all
day everyday even the most inept knucklehead will get good by doing
it all day. Case in point I do work for other people and sometimes I
get these guys who have taken early retirement so they can pursue
their passsion they are in their mid fifties early sixties and think
that since they have been dabling out in the garage in the evening
and selling to friends think that they are masters. They soon
realize that in order to get good at somthing and get to a
professional level it takes a lifetime of work while they were
slaving away at the 9 to 5 at a bank we were really slaving away
learning the trade and gaining skills and making no money. I have
been at it for 14 years and have only now begun to see a little pay
off for all the years of work. If I had taken a job at Mc donalds or
Walgreens I would be halfway to retirement and would probably be
some sort of manager or something and getting paid decently. In my
obit I dont want it to say I wasted 30 years of my life as an
associate at walmart. I have made tons of jewelery and hopefully
some of it will be treasured by future generations and when they see
my stamp they will wonder who i was.
That right go ahead and shatter all my hopes and dreams. You meen to
tell me that no matter how much solder and heat I throw at a piece
it wont leap. I have been trying for years but I will yeild to your
superior knowledege and skill and try to become one with the
universe. (if I knew how to use a computer I would put one of those
funny faces here to let everyone know that I am just kidding around)
Holy smokes I figured it out and nothing bad happened when I clicked
the smilly face.
Most independeant jewelers earn very little even though they spend
their days working with very expensive items. I think alot of people
are misinformed as to what a jeweler earns prior to getting my job
from hell I earned about ten bucks an hour working in stores when I
first started I got nothing then after a year or so i got minunmum
wage I never got health insurance or vacation or anything. Most
stores that I have worked for that where independently owned, they
could barely scrape together payroll every week and some weeks there
was no payroll he would just owe us. That is why most stores will
not take an apprentice because if he or she cannot bring in money
there is no room for them. The last store I worked for my wife told
me that I had to hold out for at least eleven bucks an hour so that
we might be able to buy health insurance on our own since we never
had any before and having a child and no health insurance is crazy.
Well I almost passed out when they gave me 25. Everything has a
price though. I would not give up being a goldsmith however i dont
encourage any one to become one.
