if you want to buy a very good quality set of drawthongs this are the best i have found on the market now , made in germany and ottofrei sells them this are the ones i use on the big drawbench i have if i want to draw very heavy wire i use this ,they are very well made and are made with tool heat treated steel they are very hard should last a life time and more
Hey Rob,
I think it was Sherlock Holmes (not Watson) who said, āI never get your limits, Watson.ā It seems that years of crafting have led you to be rather adventurous and fearless as far as innovation is concerned. I can just see you heading downstairs with a twinkle in your eye, sayimg, āNow letās see, what can I try today?ā I am far more timid and need a push to try anythingā¦
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More likely it is: āWhat can I screw up today?ā. Thanksā¦Rob
youāre a puristā¦ I was only a hobbyistā¦ I drew my own wire but only 16 gauge as the thickestā¦ thinner wires sufficed most applicationsā¦ I tried to be a purist too and enjoyed rolling and drawingā¦ a great learning opportunityā¦ but since I did not make stuff to sell, just for my own pleasure, I ended up buying thicker stock as needed,ā¦the only hitch was with bought goldā¦ I liked to work with 22 and no less than 18K goldā¦ bought tubing and other stock was 14K or lessā¦ the amounts required were negligible but not what a purist would wantā¦I also know that if I were in mass production mode, it would have been a pain to manually make your own stockā¦
I screwed up a lotā¦doing all and only fabrication workā¦ but i took it as part of the learning processā¦ especially if you are taught only the very basics in a high school jewelry class and returned to it as a hobbyist decades laterā¦ when 12 man hours of work were ruined by pushing the limits by overheating something into a sagging fused mess I was naturally disappointed by chalked it off to experienceā¦ no other option except to either quit altogether or hang yourself!!!..using mostly hardware store bought tools, and a few speciality hand tools, most people can learn to make sophisticated pieces that are technically difficult with enough trial and error, just using basic toolsā¦ nothing ventured, nothing gainedā¦ the worst thing that did happen to me was hammering a piece of gold with a 3 lb sledge hammer, on a full sized heavy anvil outsideā¦ I lost my grip and an ounce of gold flew in the air, never to be seen againā¦ but gold can be replacedā¦ putting your eye out with a shard of metal canātā¦ safety first alwaysā¦
thanks for contributingā¦ youāre a professional and are cautiousā¦ I was neitherā¦ I enjoyed pushing the limits and occasionally paid for itā¦live and learnā¦
I think that all of us in metal working, be it precious, bronze or copper, or just backyard welding of scrap metal into a piece of furniture or free form sculpture appreciate how metal is ALIVEā¦Forget about all of the technical stuff about phase diagrams and eutectic points and ternariesā¦itās the joy of turning something obdurate, using heat and sweat and occasionally tears (but not, I hope blood!) into something that is a work of artā¦so far as precious stones are concerned, for me, it ultimately was the beauty of them and not necessarily the value nor the geochemistry behind them that counted even moreā¦ when working with them, though, I did learn to use extreme caution in NOT pushing the limitsā¦ cracking one stone while setting it was once too muchā¦never again
wow thats a crazy story about the lost gold you where hitting with a hammer
yeahā¦ what a surprize and what a disappointmentā¦ looked everywhere to find it but a metal detector would have cost more than the piece of goldā¦some lucky soul may find it somewhere buried in the dirt maybe even next doorā¦ live and learnā¦ never againā¦ at least safety firstā¦ I never set my hair on fire nor burned my lungs with toxic fumes from concentrated 37% saturated HCL or HN03ā¦