Best way to polish small silver components

Best way to polish small jewelry components

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How small, what metal and what kind of finish do you want? We have recently had a very informative discussion about polishing, especially tumble polishing, which is what you will likely want to…Rob

Thanks rmeixner, The pieces are about 10 mm, silver. I was just wondering if maybe you could mount them on something to use a bench polisher on them. I think maybe the Tumblr is the way to go. I was just hoping to get the scratches out of the back of the silver components.

If I have a small silver piece that I want to polish on my polishing motor or flex shaft, and there aren’t enough to tumble polish polish, I do mount it to something that will give me a handle to hold it with to polish. If I am making small earrings with post, I will solder both earrings to the same length of post wire long enough to eventually make both post. I can hang on to one earring while polishing the other on a polishing wheel. Once I am finished polishing, I can do the twist motion needed to harden the post and then cut them down to size, add the retaining groove and I am done. I make small earrings and pendants with an 18 gauge jump ring soldered to the edge to hang on either ear wires or bails. I use a dowel with a very small screw hook screwed into the end of the dowel. Putting the hook through the jump ring gives me a handle to hold the small earring or pendant to polish them. I have also super glued the piece to be polished to a nail head and used the nail as a handle to polish the piece. You can carefully heat the nail and the piece will let go and fall off. You may need to use a sharp knife to remove a bit of hardened super glue. If you are real careful you can dopp the piece to a dowel using dopping wax and then polish. Be careful as the heat from polishing may soften the wax enough to lose the bond to the dowel. Finally, you can mount the piece in a small vise or even engraving ball if you have one and polish with your flex shaft. I am sure that others have more ideas, but these are some that I use all the time…Rob

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Those are brilliant ideas, thank you so much I can use quite a few of them. Christina Butchko

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Really good ideas. Thank you.

Because my reattached fingers don’t hold things very well I have made a number of jigs to hold small pieces when I polish. These are two of them but over time I have made dozens of single purpose jigs. I know Brother Rob has and I know our Dad did as well. And I am sure everyone has and probably thought nothing special of them.

The photo shows a jig for polishing earrings with posts and pins with clutches.
It is made of black UHMW plastic but I have very similar jigs made of maple.

The implement with the clothes pin is made for polishing earrings and pendants with holes for French wires and bails. This specific device is for earrings no wider than 1" but I have others up to 2". I do find in using the clothes pin polisher that doing the insides first is best.

Don

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You can take a reject or make a duplicate in brass. Heat it up to a low red heat on a solid block - when hot press on top of it with a block of wood or a dowel until the piece is flush with the surface. Quench, remove the piece and file a quarter or so of the pcs. thickness. Put the piece that you want to polish in the burnt recess. Use a 4” hard felt buff with Greystar to clean and pre - polish the backside. Assuming that the PC. is stamped. To do the front, solder the post on, drill a hole in the block large enough to accommodate variances on where the post goes. Good luck!