Lucy,
Anyways my husband has very nicely offered to buy me a Durston D4
rolling mill - providing I can find a good deal! so where is the
best place to get one? I'd like the D4 because I will never need to
upgrade it - but would a D2 be more than adequate for someone just
out of school? I'm a toolaholic and I have a problem - I know a
D150 would be fine too, but the double ones look prettier ;)
Those two mills are both top of the line, cream of the crop models.
There are many many goldsmiths who, despite being out of school for
decades, don’t yet have mills that fancy or costly. You’d be unlikely
to exceed the capacity of a D2 unless you’re planning to work with
unusually large sizes of sheet metal. In silver, sometimes that
happens. But here’s the thing. Silver is not so easy to make large
good ingots and your own larger sheet metal. Gold, yes, but how
often will you need to make gold sheet that large? With silver, small
bits of sheet metal are practical, but trying to get flawless larger
pieces can be an excercise in frustration, so many people I know buy
commercially made sheet metal for the projects needing larger sheet.
And silver is cheap enough you can stock several thicknesses without
totally breaking the bank.
To phrase this a bit differently:
For the high school kid who’s just gotten his or her drivers
learning permit, or maybe that first actual license, Should they be
satisfied if the first car daddy buys them is a fully loaded, 80
thousand dollar BMW 7000 series with all the bells and whistles (a
car quite comfortable on the german autobahn at 140mph or more, but
who’s power you’ll never legally be able to fully use here in the
U.S.). Or should they insist on never needing to upgrade to a more
powerful car, and go straight to the Bugatti, (I think that’s the
name. A million + dollar beast capable of speeds around 240mph on the
straightaway, if you can find some place to do that.) Obviously,
because our newly minted young driver loves cars, the suggestion that
they’d be fine starting off with a decent Toyota Corolla, an
economical workhorse that will do the job reliably for years to
come, would be just out of the question…
The point is, if you want the D4, and hubby will fork out the cash
for it, well, heck. Go for it. But you’re unlikely to absolutely need
that much mill now, and like as not, will never really absolutely
need one. Even the D2 may well be more mill than you really need now
or in the future. For me, while the two double mills do indeed look
cool, and save some floor space, I’d rather have two seperate mills,
one flat, and one for wire. Costs less for the same capacity, and I
find the seperate mills easier to use as well. Maintenance is also a
bit simpler with seperate mills. Personally, I’d think that
considering the vast array of tools you might wish to equip yourself
with, spending what a D4 or even a D2 costs right off the bat simply
means that you’ll be overequipped for rolling, and underequipped with
perhaps a lot of other useful items you could have used some of that
cash for.
One other aspect to keep in mind is that good rolling mills seem to
retain a fair portion of their value over time, so if you do
eventually upgrade after starting with a smaller mill, your old mill
can be sold reasonably easily for enough to make it a worthwhile
consideration. Used mills put up for sale seldom sit around too long.
So if, down the road, you find you really can justify a mill like
that and need to upgrade, that process might be less painful than
you’d think.
Peter