OK Orchidland, share all your cool ideas!
Hammering the semipointed remains of a tiny ball bur like a nail
into the edge of ones bench not only helps to relieve the frustration
of knowing the former ball end of that bur is now imbedded in your
ring and will have to be, time consumingly, etched out in the pickle,
but it also now gives you yet another new peg on which to stack your
moore’s disks… 
And of course, should the need arise, you can always heat the
unbroken shank end of the bur red hot and bend over the last couple
millimeters of that end into a small L shape, which then gets nicely
polished. the result is a rotary burnisher good for removing casting
porosity in those castings that can withstand such surface work
without loosing too much of their shape.
OK Orchidland, share all your cool ideas!
I never throw out old burs (but then again I can’t seem to throw out
anything before taking it apart to see if there is something
salvageable in there that may come in handy someday- good thing I
have a huge, 1,200 sq. ft. studio!). I make scribes from broken burs-
put the bur in the flex shaft and spin it on sandpaper sticks to
shape it into a scribe that is much thinner/ pointie= r than what you
can buy in the catalogs. I mount it in a tapered 3/8=B2 dowel o= r a
pin vise. (I love double ended pin vises with reversible collets. I
use this scribe for all my layout work- on metal and wax.
Make another scribe like above- then take to the polisher to give it
a mirror polish surface. You can put this in your flex shaft and use
it as an awesome burnisher to get into little tight areas to be
smoothed. You can also put it in a pin vise and burnish with it by
hand. I have these in many sizes and shapes.
I make wax carving tools from old burs- take a snap on disc and
grind a diagonal face on the end of the bur.
My buddy, Blaine Lewis was just here teaching Advanced Stone
Setting- he has some great ideas of what to do with old burs- come
on Blaine- tell all!
HTH, Kate Wolf- Workshops at Wolf Designs- offering dynamic workshops
by leading instructors, in spectacular Portland, Maine. (Shameless
plug!) http://www.katewolfdesigns.com
Hammering the semipointed remains of a tiny ball bur like a nail
into the edge of ones bench not only helps to relieve the
frustration of knowing the former ball end of that bur is now
imbedded in your ring and will have to be, time consumingly, etched
out in the pickle, but it also now gives you yet another new peg on
which to stack your moore's disks... :-)
ROFL!!! I’ve done that! mostly with the little drillbits on a
3/32 shaft, that I use for piercing the initial holes into my Celtic
pierced pieces. I generally pre drill about fifty pieces and at the
end of the day have quite the collection of broken drills. I’ve also
been known to do small scale dart shooting with them
Dear Peter, I set a multitude of stones in flush set bezels. The best
tools I find for burnishing the setting are made from old bur shanks.
Some beading tool steel is hard enough but not always. I take the
bur shank, anneal it, place in the rotary tool and turn against a
file or suitable abrasive to the desired tapered point, bring to a
polish. Then the tool is tempered to a dark straw and given the most
perfect polish I can provide. The settings are generally undercut
into the jewelry and the burnishing action is circular around the
stone. Several burnishers of various point and taper sizes make the
work a joy. All I have come from essentially the shanks of broken or
worn out cutting burs. Good steel is hard to waste when a tool is
needed! (Thanks for the info on the bezel tool shape, btw, for
removing stones.) Peace and Blessings,
Thomas.
I also use those broken burrs to apply glue in half drill pearls.
You can get a small ball bur in the drill hole quite far with lots of
glue. Frank Goss
Broken burs are not for the garbage can!!! I, like Kate, use them
to make wax carving tools out of. I also use them to make differnt
size punches for setting bezels or anything that needs to be tapped
on… The same size punch will not work as well in every situation,
therefore you need to make yourself a few different sizes. They make
great burnishing tools also…( you need to file them to a point and
polish… I use my GRS honing wheel to sand them to a point) … There
is a point in which you can probably have TOOO MANY (Kate) laying
around in baggies or wherever, this may tend to put a person in the
catagory of being obsesive compulsive… LOL Just kidding… I have
about a hundred in a baggie in my bench…
Welcome one and all from middle-earth. The Lords of the Rings greet
you. A few tips to share. The remnants of tungsten carbide burs can
be fashioned into a fascinating array of tools. One I especially
like is to take the spare tip from a setting hammer, drill a hole to
take a tungsten carbide insert made from about a third of a bur
shaft. The tip of the bur shaft is ground into a pyramid shape and
then polished, and held in place with some super glue, removable
with acetone. By holding the tip reasonably firmly against a cast
metal surface at an angle while “hammering”, the tip “wanders” and
"finds" the softer grain of the casting, creating quite a stunning
randomly textured and burnished finish which can be simply lightly
rouged to finish. This is also very effective is very small brills
are then randomly gypsy set (flush set) so that the texture is
interupted occasionally by pinpoints of light. Sick of paying for
Moores disks? Buy a set of wad punches from an engineering supply
house and make your own from emery paper. Stack them up about a
dozen at a time and using and old drill punch a center hole which
will also keep them neatly together until used. Use a screw mandril
to mount the disks and make a backing disk out of plastic or
whatever. Using a larger diameter disk can speed up finishing
times and ease one’s elbow, and a larger diameter disk with a solid
backing made from a thin metal disk makes a woderful dressing lap
for graver tips. Hope this helps someone out there.
Dear Peter, I set a multitude of stones in flush set bezels. The best
tools I find for burnishing the setting are made from old bur shanks.
Some beading tool steel is hard enough but not always. I take the
bur shank, anneal it, place in the rotary tool and turn against a
file or suitable abrasive to the desired tapered point, bring to a
polish. Then the tool is tempered to a dark straw and given the most
perfect polish I can provide. The settings are generally undercut
into the jewelry and the burnishing action is circular around the
stone. Several burnishers of various point and taper sizes make the
work a joy. All I have come from essentially the shanks of broken or
worn out cutting burs. Good steel is hard to waste when a tool is
needed! (Thanks for the info on the bezel tool shape, btw, for
removing stones.) Peace and Blessings,
Thomas.