Today I made a beading file, about 5 inches long, slightly curved
with both ends turned up an attached to a wooden handle. It has a
groove going the full length between two sharp ridges about 1 mm
apart. I tried it on sterling silver, 18 Karat gold and copper wire in
18 ga and 20 ga. 18 ga. = 1 mm, 20 ga is a little smaller, for those
of you living outside the North American Sanctuary for Archaic
Weights and Measures.
I had the best luck with the gold. I can tell it is going to take
some practice and fine tuning to get it down, but I can see how this
works. I tried rolling against hard wood, the tops of the beads would
not close, and on flat steel, the beads flattened out and looked more
like a grooved wire than like spheres. I think that for harder
metals. Rolling against a grooved steel bottom swedge would probably
give better results on these harder metals. Most of the research for
the paper was done on high karat gold or lead, much softer than what
I used today. The first few pieces seemed impossibly tedious, but
after a short while and some practice it got much better. The paper
suggested that harder alloys might need to be done in several stages,
annealing between them. I tried this and found it very difficult to
keep my place the second time through. i think it would be much more
practicle to find the right pressure and get each bead finished
before you move on to the next. I spent about two and a half hours on
this today, including making the tool, but it will probably be about
10 days before I can return to it due to some travel. I thought I had
better get my report in while the thread is still fresh.
Thanks all of you who have made contibutions to this discussion.
Looking for some input on this problem led me to discover Orchid,
which I eexpect will now be a regular part of my daily internet
patrol.
Stephen Walker