PB Cohen Creations

I decided I needed a sturdy table to hammer on, and lucky for me, I have a friend who helped me out!

Here's the table top: twelve 2x4 studs held together with four bolted threaded rods. The beginnings of the legs are in place, bolted in with the table top. Although I'll have to check the tightness of those bolts periodically, this makes all the pieces easy to replace. We thought about getting a hand sander to smooth out the top, but so far I've decided against it. I'd only be tempted to try to keep that table top smooth, and the purpose of this table is whacking.

But wait, it's adjustable! Here are the leg "sleeves" waiting to be drilled. (Click on all these photos for a bigger version.)


The leg sleeves have been drilled, and we're adding the bolts. I will stand while using this table, but since it's adjustable, I could do many things.


I love my table!


Here's some detail on the table's first task: holding my 6-inch square steel block. A block that size is pretty heavy, but when you really whack at it, it'll still move. So I have four steel braces holding it in place. So far, those braces are working just fine. I had to trim down the angled braces on the table top.


I got some ideas for this table from Tomi/MetalRiot, who had a woodworker build her a beautiful table for pounding. Hers is just gorgeous! But I figure anyone with some basic tools could make mine. If you think you'd be interested in buying some plans for a sturdy, adjustable table suitable for hammering, let me know. We'd have to test it all out, maybe make a couple more prototypes, but if there's interest, we could put something together.

What would you use a sturdy table for?

I will not show a photo of my bench, in part because I do a lot of work away from home, and in part because my personal space is way too messy to even work on right now. So sad. Part of that I can blame on photography, as I am ONCE AGAIN trying to solve that puzzle. Siiiiiiiiigh. But I can't blame all of it on the collection of five (5) lamps currently gathered around the light box (with one more about to be corralled into the fight). Mostly, I just can't seem to get myself organized these days. Too bad I'm the kind of person who appreciates a relatively clean surface on which to work.

Still, I take pretty good care of tools, and tend to put them away when I'm finished using them. Except for four general types of tools, which I use often enough (and because I'm a lazy slug) to just leave out all the time:

1) A ruler, obviously. I have a six-inch (15.24 centimeter) steel ruler that makes me very happy. Don't laugh at me.

2) Sawing tools, obviously, even though I bonk my head on the bench pin almost every time I add a new lamp to my Photography Command And Control Center. (Um, the power strip is under the bench.) Bench pin, saw frame, saw blades.

3) Files, obviously. Very course flat, course half round, and a half round needle file. Usually.

4) A sheet metal gauge (pictured). Yeah. This one doesn't seem obvious to me at all.

Unless, maybe, you keep watching the price of silver. Have you seen the price of silver lately? Siiiiigh. Truly, I love thick metal, but that doesn't always make sense for the piece you're working on — either the size or the technique. And I also try to use thinner metal when possible, since that makes the finished piece a little less expensive. How thick did I make that one? How thick is this one? How thick is it now? (Notice how you don't say "thin" in this context?) (Well, I don't, anyway.)

I guess I'm also a bit of a measurement geek. Our names for measurements are so arbitrary, and so interesting. (For example, the "common cubit," one of the earliest measures, was the length of the forearm from the elbow to the tip of the middle finger. Whose elbow? Whose middle finger?) Perhaps the more I measure the thickness of my metal, the neater my desk will appear?

The next few items on the list of tools that get left on the bench are just as likely to be put away, so I'll keep the official list at four. But they include, in no particular order, drafting templates with different shapes (circles, ovals, etc.), dividers, a drafting compass, and pliers of various types. I suppose pencil and paper could be included, but they're in a category I usually consider "so likely to be left out on the bench that they're invisible." Don't laugh at me.

* NOTE: Although I briefly considered trying to photograph my own gauge, I decided against it as a small step towards preserving my sanity. I'm afraid I don't remember where I found this photo, which shows what I consider to be the "back" of the gauge, since it depicts an equivalent to the B&S numbers, um, probably in inches. Hey, I don't care about inches (or millimeters, or whatever it is) when it comes to sheet metal, I care about the B&S number, which is one of three major internationally-agreed-upon standards for measuring the thickness of wire and sheet metal. Click on the image for a bigger version. And then convert 24 gauge to points — a unit for measuring type — which, since 1886, has been exactly 0.3514598 millimeters, or 1/72.27 inch. Exactly!

Whenever you file or sand (for example) metal, you encounter friction. And when you encounter friction you create heat — especially when you're using some sort of motorized polishing bur. Sure, it all goes faster on a flex shaft, but the faster you go, the hotter your metal gets. My favorite new tool, which falls in the category of "why on earth didn't I try this stuff sooner" is finger wrap cloth, or finger safety tape, or Alligator Skin (R), or vet wrap, or that stuff they wind a few times around your elbow to keep the cotton swab on after they've taken a blood sample at the doctor's office.

Whatever you call it, whatever the width of the tape, whatever its color, it all works the same way: it's a little stretchy, it only sticks to itself, you can wrap it around stuff, and its shape conforms to whichever body part you wrap it around.

(I should also note it's used by bird people, who will do things like wrap it around perches made out of PVC pipe. The PVC is too slippery for most birds to grasp easily, and a quick replacement of the wrap is an easy way to clean a perch.)

In the jewelry world, a couple of layers gives your fingers protection against cuts and burns, plus it's flexible enough that you can still grip small pieces of metal while you're polishing them. I was amazed to be holding things through the tape and not feel the heat until I touched them with a bare finger. So yeah, I guess I might be able to start a fire when I put a really hot trinket down on a stray piece of kindling (stranger things have been found on the work bench), but at least I won't burn my fingers while holding it!

I love drilling tiny holes into metal, even back when I used a hand drill most of the time. I used to store different sizes of drill bits in plastic containers — many of the small sizes usually used by jewelers fit into old 35mm film canisters, for example. But a little while ago, I got a big set. Because the bits are sitting out in the open, I can easily decide visually which one I want to use. I love it! Click on this photo for a big version; if you do you'll see that I'm missing numbers 71 and 72. That's because these are very small, and thus easy to break. Here's one of them:

Be sure to click on this one for a big version. You'll see two brightly-colored curls of silver sticking up, with the grey tip of the drill broken off in the middle, stuck in the hole.

You can dissolve stuck drill bits in a solution of alum — the friendly folks at the Etsy Metal blog have a nice description of this. Since I was cutting little faces, I just cut this one out with my saw blade. More on that later.

Last night Harley helped me read my tools catalog from Rio Grande:

You can click on both of these pictures for bigger versions.

Lucky for me, I guess, I wasn't shopping for pliers. Unfortunately, I never found what I was looking for.

I popped into the studio on Sunday to use the drill press and met Ginger, the Sunday monitor, for the first time in person. She had a Scotch-Brite wheel for the buffing machine that was just fabulous! A big wheel, I guess about 6 inches in diameter and an inch wide, off-white with slightly rounded edges (although they may not have been when she first got it). She used it to get scratches and things off silver - it cut more than tripoli (without the dust and dirt from the compound), and left the metal quite smooth and shiny. I wonder if it's marketed to people besides jewelers, or if 3M discontinued this particular wheel, since I couldn't find it in the catalog (and no, Harley didn't turn that page into spitballs). I'll have to ask Ginger about it next week.

Do any of you know of a fabulous low-dirt tool to use for pre-polishing?

It turns out that a photograph of stainless steel shot is pretty dull, but if you really want, you can click on this image for a bigger version:

I love my stainless steel shot, and have been known to rub my hands lovingly over the tiny pieces as they dry. (Too much information?) But no longer. One thing the bigger version of this photo will show you is that I'd taken all the pins out of the mix. Just the other day, I put them back in — and it turns out rubbing your hands over a mix with pins in it is very prickly, so my weird habit is over.

Lots of jewelers use stainless steel shot in mixed shapes as a tumbling medium to bring a high shine to their jewelry. There are many different brands of tumblers you can use (either vibratory or rotary), and there are many kinds of tumbling media out there. But stainless steel shot has become popular, since it's easy to maintain and produces results pretty quickly. Tumbling is probably the best way to polish chains, because there's no danger of getting the chain (or your fingers) caught up in buffing tools. Tumbling is useful for very small items for the same reason. When using stainless steel shot, the process also work-hardens your pieces, which is very nice for chains, ear wires or earring posts, large hoops, etc.

Urban Maille, a wonderful resource for all things chain maille, has a very good tutorial on using stainless steel shot for polishing chains. The article mentions some of the downfalls of using pins in the mix, including the fact that they can get stuck in some of the denser chain maille weaves. Another reason mentioned — the possibility that pins leave ping marks on flat, polished expanses of metal — is the reason I first took them out of my mix. My tests didn't show "ping" marks, but I did notice some etched, wavy lines, so I took them out. If you search the web you'll find strong opinions both for and against using them. I suggest you test pins out on the styles of jewelry you're making, and see how they work for you.

I decided to put the pins back into my mix for some of the pieces I'm working on now, and because lately I haven't been making things that have large expanses of plain metal. Hopefully I won't start seeing etched lines in everything, because I am not detail-oriented enough to take the pins out of my mix more than once. Really. I distinctly remember picking them out a few years ago and thinking "I will NEVER do this again!" Hopefully I won't want to, or if I do I'll be able to find a strainer with just the right sized holes that will let them spill out on their own.

One of the biggest reasons I like tumbling pieces in the shot is because it's so much cleaner than using a buffing wheel. It's true that nothing brings up a high, lustrous shine on metal like buffing, but I decided long ago that I don't like a high luster enough to put up with all the mess. Making jewelry is dirty enough without adding that at the end.

The only thing I don't love about the stainless steel is that the burnishing action of the shot will sometimes raise a fine "lip" of metal along flat edges. I've never discovered anyone else that ran into this problem, so if you have, please let me know. My solution is to limit the time a piece spends in the tumbler (no more than, say, a couple of hours), and/or gently file off any hard edges. Or, you know, that lip, if I've left the piece in too long. I'll post a picture if it happens again.