Finishing piercing on sterling

I made a cuff bracelet of sterling silver by laying a paper pattern
down on a flat piece of metal and then cutting it out with my saw. I
was working in a class with a teacher and didn’t have time to finish
cleaning up the interior of the piercing, so went straight to
putting it on a bracelet mandrel and back and forth annealling and
hammering into shape. Now I have a beautifully shaped bracelet with
lots of holes to finish and I would like to know what a fast and
efficient way to finish these interior holes would be. The shapes
are kind of like petals although there are also small squares. There
has to be the perfect something I can stick into my foredom drill
and clean away,no? Love any suggestions.

The most reliable and accurate way to finish the piercing on your
bracelet would be with escapement files. Escapement files are smaller
than needle files and more delicate. They are commonly used by
goldsmiths to do very fine finishing and detail work.

These files have square tangs (handles) and are 140 mm long. The
cutting edge varies in length, depending upon the shape of the file,
from 40 mm to 55 mm. They are available in #2 medium cut, #4 fine
cut, and #6 extra fine.

Using these files you can access even the tiniest of piercing on
almost any shape of object. In areas where it is not easy to polish,
such as square azures behind set stones, a very acceptable finish can
be achieved with a #6 file to produce an even consistent tailored
look to the inner walls of all the open spaces.

A rotary tool is not as well suited to this particular task which is
usually best accomplished by a skilled hand with a simple tool.

A good source for these files is Otto Frei.
http://www.ottofrei.com/store/home.php?cat895

Michael David Sturlin
www.goldcrochet.com
www.michaeldavidsturlin.com

Michael:

Ifo you don’t have escapement files etc. One of the old tricks was
Polishing cords. Otto Frei sells " Mitchels Polish cords"

You can make your own. Just about any size string that is strong and
will fit through the opening can be charges with abrasive powders,
Lapidary diamond grits are very good for this. You can also run your
strings, cords, with different polishing compounds as needed. Things
like bobbing compound, Triopoli, Rouge, even Zam.

To help the abrasive grit stick to the string a light oil on the
string helps also you could use bees wax.

Hope this helps
John Sexton (Jack)

Ifo you don't have escapement files etc. One of the old tricks was
Polishing cords. Otto Frei sells " Mitchels Polish cords" 
You can make your own. Just about any size string that is strong
and will fit through the opening can be charges with abrasive
powders, Lapidary diamond grits are very good for this. You can
also run your strings, cords, with different polishing compounds as
needed. Things like bobbing compound, Triopoli, Rouge, even Zam. 

Also, the new polyester (?) backed abrasive films from 3M work very
well. While very thin strips of traditional emery paper break too
easily, emery cloth can be cut in thin strips. But it’s thicker. The
3M microfinishing films, or for finer grades, their lapping films,
both are on a very tough backing that will hold up to being cut into
very narrow strips. These can be threaded through, with the lapping
films in particular, even fairly narrow saw cuts. Make the strip a
length that you can clamp into a saw frame (If you cut a full sheet
in half across it’s width, then the short edge of the resulting half
sheet is the perfect length), and you can quickly sand the sawn edges
down to a fine finish. The finest of the lapping films will give you
a decent polish all by themselves. 3M also makes a precut version of
this, originally intended for the dental industry. These strips,
available in several grades and widths, have two abrasive grades on
the same strip. One end will be finer grade, the other, a coarser
initial grade. Handy. But I tend to just use scissors to cut my own
strips as needed from the sheets I already have in the shop, rather
than stocking another whole product…

HTH
Peter