Silversmithing "tools"

China suggested that I post this here as well as in turning.

I don’t know what these are called, and Googlepedia was not able to help me, but they are used to form silver jewellery. A local crafty person asked if I could replicate the ones that she borrowed from her teacher.

Attachment 365232


It didn’t look too difficult, and if I applied the same quality control as the sample pieces, I did not have to be too careful! They have catch marks, some bog filling and one still has the chainsaw cut-off marks on the bottom. It is a whitish wood, but fairly dense (and has to be to withstand a bit of panel beating), but I reckoned that some of my seasoned eucalyptus wood would do the job. So there is a piece of Spotted Gum, and some Ironbark and local Blue/Red Gum and the weights are better with my pieces.


I put a bit of decoration on them, just to set them apart. The main reason for starting to do that is that the skew inadvertently dug a bit of a groove near the end where I was trimming off. Best way to hide that was to burn a ring, and then I thought “bugger it!”, I will do a few more rings!

Attachment 365233

The whole family - Mum, Dad and the grown up kids:

Attachment 365234


I have heard that anyone can punch a hole in a piece of tin with the sample hole in front of him, so I did four of these with the samples there to measure off and compare, and then did one of the small ones just using the measurements. It turned (ha ha) out OK. (Most, if not all, of my work is done as a one-off and all I do is remove the wood that looks like it should not be there – the shape takes care of itself.)


Might just use a bit of Penetrol Wood Oil on them, or just leave ‘em be.


The price will be negotiable, but I would not charge or expect too much, but she is a fellow hobbiest so what goes round, comes round.

Cheers,
Alister.