Bruce, thanks for the follow up.
In fact, I broke a .01-.02 recently with my thumbnail. Another
first.
We will call you ‘super nail’ from now on. I suspect that litle
stone must have already had a flaw?!
My point was that when burnishing the inside edge of a bezel,
it is nearly impossible to not touch the stone and my personal
experience has been that this practice will damage the stone from
time to time..... Thus I learned to use a bronze burnisher in this
situation. I can't remember ever damaging a stone with bronze.
If the bronze burnisher works for you I think that’s great!I don’t
know what kind of bezels you mean…are you doing small tubes or
larger bezels? I rarely, maybe one in 50 ever need to use a
burnisher after bezeling down larger sizes. I use a rocker style
bezel roller and roll the bezel twice. The first time closes the
bezel onto the shoulder and the second time seats the bezel right
down onto the stone. On occasion there may be a ripple that needs
removing but that is usually lower on the bezel. The roller is used
at a 90 deg angle (or nearly so) and as it seats the bezel, it also
polishes it. One pass usually does it. I’ve written about this
before on Orchid and the info should be in the archive.
It left some of us with the impression that you thought that it
was good form to finish all bezels and prongs with a file.
Especially with any stones having a hardness of 6 1/2 +. If that
was not what was intended, I apologize for not reading so well.
Well, actually…see my previous response to Richard. I do use
files on almost all my prongs! So no need to apologize. Not that I
think its good form…its just the way I’ve learned to do things I
guess.
Around here, rubberized abrasive wheels with silicon carbide
are labeled such. I can't imagine why someone would think that SiC
wheels would contain pumice. Pumice wheels are labeled pumice. My
experience has shown that pumice wheels can be used safely to
finish prongs and bezels on stones as soft as strontiun
titanate {6 on the Mohs scale).
I agree with you about pumice wheels. Do you lable your own wheels?
Most of the wheels I purchase are not labled as to what they are.
I try to lable all the pumice wheels but don’t take the time to do
all the others. Anything not labled pumice…should be treated with
care. Many manufacturers don’t even say whats in them…just what
the carrier is. Guess my warning was aimed more at those just those
getting started.
Any way, this has been an interest exchange I think. We all have
our own ways of doing things but its good to trade
Cheers from Don at The Charles Belle Studio in SOFL where simple
elegance IS fine jewelry! @coralnut2