Ask Auntie EM: How do I size up a ring?

It's been a terribly long time since Auntie EM did a tutorial and we are very sorry.  If you knew what our lives have been like the last few years...you'd go easy on us.  We have missed posting and I, Ann, had an opportunity to size a ring and thought, "Why not do a tutorial!?"  So here I am..after a long hiatus.  It's good to be back, even if I can't make it a regular occasion.  So, let's get after some ring sizing!

My friend, who shall go nameless, says that this method of sizing a ring isn't necessary now that solders are so good.  I respectfully disagree.  I love this method for sizing a ring up.  It's super fast, really easy and, best of all, it holds itself in place while you solder.  It's called a dovetail joint and you'll need any kind of cutters (flush, semi flush or not flush at all) and stock that matches kind of closely the stock your ring is made.   You will also need: 

*dividers

*a ring mandrel

*a jewelers saw

*a small triangular file

*all the junk you need to solder something  

Step one is finding an original solder seam.  Sometimes you can find the seam, sometimes you can't.  If you can't, you'll have to just guess and pray the shank doesn't fall apart when you heat it, always a good time.  Use a big, bushy flame and evenly heat the piece gently until the ring turns brown.  Just as the ring turns brown, the solder seam should show up and a bright silver line.  If the ring is gold, it'll be a gold line.  Here is an example:

Once you have found the solder seam, you'll want to cut on either side of the seam with a flush cutter...but here's the trick...you want to use the NON FLUSH side to make the cut.  Usually, you want the end to be nice and flat but for this method, you want to use the opposite side of the cutters to make a pointed set of ends.  Like this:

I didn't do any filing to these, I just cut them with a pair of flush cutters.  These flush cutters.  Next, you want to make the piece that will fit in the slot you have created.  You will need your dividers for this step. Slide your cut ring on your mandrel up to where you want the new size to be.  For me, this is a 5 1/2 (except my mandrel is off, so it's a 5 1/4).  Take your dividers and measure from where your mitered cuts start.  Like this:

can you see that I'm up where the bevel starts?  So, take this measurement and now transfer it to your prerounded sizing stock like this:

I have a ring bender but you could just as easily hammer your stock over a mandrel.  Make sure it's prerounded or this whole technique won't work.  

Next, you will cut with the flush side of your cutters at your scribed line.  Your next step will be to make a cut with your saw blade on each side of this piece.  Like this:

Can you see that?  it's a terrible picture, sorry.  You want to go no deeper than the depth of the saw blade.  I used a 2/0 I think.  Do this to both sides of this tiny piece.  Go ahead...I'll wait.  

Once this is done, you will take your triangular file and run it along this saw cut.  Trust me, don't skip the saw step...it's fast and it makes a difference.  Run the triangular file a couple of times along the cut...don't go nuts...just a couple of passes.  It should look like this:

Again, sorry for the bad pictures.  So, now you have this tiny piece and it's time to fit it into place.  What you want to remember here is that you want it fit so there is enough tension to hold it in...but not so much that when you heat it, it flips out.  Again, trust me, you REALLY don't want it to flip out of there.  It will look like this:

BOOM!  It fits great, doesn't it?  And it was SO EASY!  Now all you have to do is suck solder in there and you're golden!  it will look like this after you solder:

Only...take my advice...pickle the ring after you find the solder seam in step #1.  I didn't and had some pitting in the solder that I had to clean out and fix.  No biggie.  But if I had pickled the ring, that might not have happened.  

I was in a hurry to finish this ring and took a million quick pictures of all the clean up and polish but...they sucked so I'm not going to use them.  And I think you can handle it from here.  Even with taking the photos, this took less than 15 minutes.  It's so easy.  If you have any questions, please leave them in comments below.

I hope this is helpful!

Good luck!

Making a bespoke box-toggle clasp.

When you've made a really special necklace and an off-the-peg clasp just wont do, then consider making your own box clasp, you can print this off to take to your work bench / put in your sketchbook and follow at your own pace. This example is just a round bead shape for the sake of clarity in this tutorial, but just imagine that it is any shape or form you wish, it could be etched or enameled or have details soldered onto it, or even have a stone set on it....it's up to you!

The benefit of this type of clasp are several:

• In this tutorial mine is a simple set of hemispheres, but these could be any shape and form, with etched, soldered or constructed details, which make the clasp an integral part of the design of the necklace or bracelet for which it is intended.
• There are no separate 'loose' elements to break or wear away.
• You might find it easier to make than a box or tube clasp because there is no sprung tongue to make...(if your springy tongue is not of the right dimensions or not hard enough then it doesn't work smoothly. I think the construction of this box toggle-clasp is easier than that for a box clasp.
• It can be a very small device as I've made here, or it can be a very large feature.
• It can be just as discreet as a small box clasp, in this case each half of the device is only 3mm in depth.
• Simple tools required.

So here we go;

 

1. In this case, I punched out two larger circles that will be the flat, touching surfaces of the clasp and one small circle which will be sawn in half to become part of the locking mechanism. If you don't have a circle punch then you can mark out the cirlces with a pair of dividers then saw out. I also have some half-round wire.

2. I have cut the small circle in half and I next intend to sandwich it between two 1cm lengths of the half-round wire like this (above right), but there's a gap which means that not all surfaces are making good contact.... 

 

3. ...so, I need to file a recess in one half of the half-round wire, so that the semi-circle sits on it with its surface flush with the flat surface of the half-round wire. I'm leaving a bit of wire sticking out, as it's easy to file away later...better than losing length of the semi-circle at this stage.

4. You can see above that I'm holding my little length of half-round wire in a ring vice (ring clamp) so that it's easy to use my flat needle file.

    

5. Now you can see where I have made the recess for the semi-circle to fit and when I put it between the two little lengths of half-round wire and bind it together ready for soldering, there's no gap anymore.

 

6. Here's the little fella soldered together with hard solder. I've filed the end flush and tidy. Now it needs to be soldered onto one of the plates.....

7. Here it is soldered on, also with hard solder, right in the centre of the plate, with its little wings spread out. There's no reason why you should un-solder the work you've done on the wire and semi-circle, as long as you keep your flame concentrated mostly on the plate during the heating up and then darting to the wire at the last moment. I use hard solder with the fact in mind that this is a device which will be wiggled and twisted a lot by the wearer.

 

8. Next we want to make the 'key-hole' in the other base plate, so first use a circle gauge stencil of the kind you find in a good stationery shop, to find the size of circle that will easily fit over the wire (but not so it fits over the wings too).

9. I've marked out the circle, drilled a pilot hole, then commenced sawing out the hole along with a slot which is slightly longer and a teensy bit thicker than the wings themselves.

When I test it, the 'key' fits into the slot, inside the hemisphere and can be turned like a key.

10. Once I'm sure that the key-hole fits, I solder that plate into its hemisphere (which is the part I said in the beginning that could be whatever design you liked). I used medium solder and the same again for soldering the half jump-ring onto the side. Do the same with the other half of the clasp....the part with the 'key' on.

11. If your key is a smidge too long to be accommodated in the depth of the other half of the clasp and therefore is not able to turn at all, then it's perfectly okay to file it down a little. Again, I have used my trusty ring vice to hold the half while I use a medium sized flat file to shorten the length of the key.

12. Here is the finished device. There are two important things to note here, firstly I have filed the edges of the hemispheres where they are joined to the base plates, with a sloped edge to make it easier to hold the piece when undoing it...it just helps you fingers grip it a bit at this small scale because hemispheres are slippery to grab. Secondly, I have located the jump rings so that when the finished piece of jewellery is worn, the key and lock are in opposing directions and will not undo...that is the point of it, after-all!

So finally, we have a nice clasp which operates in exactly the same way that a toggle clasp does, but has a whole different set of plus-points to it. Good luck!

Taps and Dies....the lowdown.

No, not a dance routine on Strictly Come Dancing, but a way of making your own screws and threads for connecting parts made not of metals or for parts that need to be removable / interchangeable. Here is how to understand it all and how to make them, it's a lot of information so hold on tight!

I'd often wanted to know how to sink my own threaded hole and make a little threaded screw to fit into it. I'd read books that were old, out-of-print and new, but they all seemed to give me only half the information I needed. I looked on websites and found the information to be partial then found a variety of charts and diagrams on the internet, all meaning little to me. I've been asked so many times how to use these things and asked so many times how you're supposed to know which bits to use with what parts....that I bit the bullet and bought a set for about £45 ($69) in order to learn. Actually finding a complete set that I could afford or didn't look cheap and badly made, was another mission in itself. So I'm sharing what I've learned with you;

Above are the 4 pieces that I want to screw together. Two pieces of copper, one of old tins, one of perspex.

BA Size	Diameter of wire (mm)	Diameter of wire (inches)	Diameter of hole (mm)	Diameter of hole (inches)
12	1.3	0.051	1.05	0.041
10	1.8	0.071	1.4	0.055
8	2.25	0.089	1.8	0.071
6	2.85	0.112	2.3	0.091
5	3.2	0.126	2.65	0.104
4	3.6	0.142	3.0	0.118
3	4.1	0.161	3.45	0.136
2	4.8	0.189	4.0	0.157
1	5.4	0.213	4.5	0.177
0	6.0	0.236	5.1	0.201

ISO thread size	Diameter of wire (mm)	Diameter of wire (inches)	Diameter of hole (mm)	Diameter of hole (inches)
M1.6	1.65	0.065	1.26	0.050
M1.8	1.85	0.073	1.45	0.057
M2.0	2.05	0.081	1.6	0.063
M2.5	2.6	0.102	2.0	0.079
M3.0	3.1	0.122	2.5	0.098
M3.5	3.6	0.142	2.9	0.114
M4.0	4.1	0.161	3.3	0.130
M4.5	4.6	0.181	3.8	0.150
M5.0	5.1	0.201	4.2	0.165
M6.0	6.1	0.240	5.1	0.201

Above are two charts, one of which you will need to refer to depending on whether you work in "BA" or "ISO" threads. As I understand it, the ISO system is what is most commonly used today across a wide variety of applications, BA is an older system but the main difference is that the depth of cut and angle of the thread is less extreme than on an ISO thread....so if a screw is a little helter skelter at the fairground and the slide twisting around the tower is the thread itself, then how much the twisting slide actually sticks out from the tower and the steepness gradient of the slide, is known as the "pitch". The pitch is smaller on BA threads, which are used on really tiny srews like those on your spectacles. This is more appropriate apparently for using with soft metals like silver, as the pitch is less fragile (doesn't stick out so much and less steep) so less liable to twist or shear off. I could not find a BA set that I could afford so I thought "what the heck" shrugged my shoulders and went for an ISO set. You can buy taps and dies seperately, they are fragile and easy to break but I had no idea what I wanted, neither could I find a tap & die wrench to purchase seperately.

Here are the dimensions of the pieces, I'm using ISO. I had some more or less 2mm wire in stock so looking at the chart (I've highlighted the bit I looked at) I could see which tap and die size I needed to select. The wrench came with a circular 'washer' which is removable and is for holding the smaller taps and dies.

I have removed the washer (shown above with a smaller size die so you can see what I mean) and inserted the M2.0 that I needed into one of two tap adapters that came in the set (look again at my first picture at the top of this post, there are 9 dies, 18 taps {2 of each}, 2 tap adapters, 1 wrench and a die adapteradapter (one adapter is for the M1 sizes and the other is for the M2 sizes), then making sure it's in nice and vertical, tighten the screw with a flat-head screwdriver.

Next, I took the copper disc that I wanted the thread cut into and taped it onto a block of wood. I had previously drilled a hole with a 1.6mm drill bit (see the chart again). The metal part should not be less than 2.5mm thick, this piece was about 3mm thick. Slowly and carefully I turned the wrench clockwise with a little pressure after having first applied a bit of lubrication on the tap (I only had wax but oil is more appropriate). I was careful to keep the tap perpendicular to the piece I was cutting into. I turned one whole rotation then turned back out half a rotation to let out the swarf. I kept on going in this way until I had cut a thread right through the disc.....it took about 5 minutes.

Hopefully, if you look closely you can see the thread cut into my disc.

Next, I needed to cut my wire so that it became a screw. I picked up the M2.0 die (see the chart). You can see how one side has the size printed onto it and the other might be plain flat or dished. Notice the notch in one side of the disc for locating against the screw in the wrench.

I needed the adaptor for holding the die which just pops in. I inserted the die and tightened the screw, you can see above the printed numbers just peeking out from under the adaptor. Notice that tightening the screw would make the centre of the 'clover leaf' squeeze down to a smaller size, the centre is where the cutting thread is.

Next I inserted the wire into a vice, making sure the wire was vertical. Then with the printed side of the die facing up I fitted the other side onto the wire in the centre of the 'clover leaf'. This side of the die hole is slightly champfered to accept the wire. Then I started to turn the wrench clockwise and after quite some considerable time, got absolutely nowhere. After lots of faffing about trying different things and wondering if the die, my digital callipers or the chart was inaccurate, I found in one of my books the instructions...."the wire needs to be just about able to fit into the die before you tighten the screw"......not exactly engineering accuracy talk, so I drew the wire down to a narrower gauge which just about almost not quite fit the die, down to 1.80mm, even though the chart says the wire needs to be 2.05mm. Trying again, the die cut beautifully, one turn of cutting, half a turn back to remove swarf and lubrication on the wire...over and over again. I still don't know why the original thickness of wire was too much, as all charts have the same number info on them, perhaps I squeezed my callipers too tight on the wire....

You can see that I've cut quite a way down the wire and the start of the wire is now screwed up out of the top of the die.

Above you can clearly see the wire has now got a thread cut onto it. How about that!

I sawed a section of the wire off leaving an uncut couple of mm at one end then soldered the uncut end to a head. I soldered that end on with a gap of no thread because I didn't want solder flowing up the thread and filling it up. The other end I slightly rounded off with a file and emery paper so that it feeds nicely into the threaded hole we cut earlier.

A moment of triumph, the screw threads nicely into the disc. It threads through an uncut hole in my bit of dished tins material....

...and through my perspex disc which is also cut with a threaded hole, then into a threaded disc of metal at the back. Hurrah!

Great. But what if you want to cut a threaded hole which doesn't go all the way through your material? You'd be using a thicker material for starters. The hole would be known as a "blind" hole. Ah, well you can see that the taps I have used are tapered, so how would they cut all the way down to the 'bottom' of a hole? You would need to buy taps called 'bottoming' taps, also known as 'plug' taps in the same size as the tap you use to cut most of the hole, so in the case above I would have had two or three plug taps in size M2.0, each tap would have a taper which is less severe than the one you use before it and so gradually cuts a thread into the last few mm of the hole you have drilled. I have seen taps for sale called "plug taps", so if I ever use any of these I will show you what happens. 

Making a collet mount with punches and block.

This is very much like the rub-over bezel mount with an open back that I showed you here, but with an elegant taper for faceted stones only and produced with the help of a collet block. 

What's a collet block?...it is a steel block with tapered cone-shaped depressions and a matching punch, for stretching tube sections into cone shapes for your mounts, or as in this case for tidying up a pre-fabricated cone shaped setting. These blocks come in different shapes for a variety of mount styles, such as oval.

So, first I made my template and then I marked that onto my metal. I used aabout 0.9mm thick metal, which is quite thick, but you will see why that is, later. How did I get the template right? There are lots of methods listed in so many books on how to do this and they all differ. Here is the way I do it, which you can see in my sketch below;

You can see that I have drawn the width of the stone as it actually is, which in this case was 5mm. The two lines which I then brought down (that long "V" down to a point) define the taper of the mount, so a shorter fatter V gives a squat mount and a longer V gives a more tapered, cone. It's helpful after you have drawn the arc, to also add the thickness of the metal you're using, onto that too, so that the final template you cut out is the whole of the shaded section  and the extra bit up to where it's marked number 4. This technique works for me every time.

Next, I sawed out the shape and made sure that edges were neat. I used my round nose pliers to bend the shape for my mount around, until the edges met perfectly. Once you have a good flush join, solder it closed with Hard solder. After pickling, you get to put your mount into the collet block and use your punch to true up the form. Which hole do you use though?....well, which one does your stone sit in nicely that leaves the table of the stone a couple of mm below the surface of the block?....choose the next size of hole up from that one.

Now make sure the stone fits the mount. You need a couple of mm proud of the stone table (the "table" is the top, flat surface of the stone). The mount is then soldered into the jewellery item, again with Hard solder.

Now you need to grind away a seat for the stone to sit on, just like we did for this mount.  Here in the above photo' you can see that I have coloured in the inside of the mount with black felt-tip pen, so that I can easily see the mark that I have scribed with my dividers which indicates where I will be cutting the seat.

 

I used both these burrs to grind out the seat. You may find that just one suits you better than the other. Because I have Carpal Tunnel syndrome in my wrists, I find this procedure quite difficult and a little painful, so I tend to grind out a little too much in my quest and for that reason, I prefer to solder a constructed seat into my settings, as in this setting. In this case, I might make another cone to a slightly smaller template and solder it inside. Then I would thin down the top edge of the outer cone, so that it is thin enough to rub over, but for the purpose of this tutorial, I will carry on cutting!....

Further shaping was achieved by using a medium sized, fine flat file, to take the height of the mount down until it is lower than the table but above the girdle (the "girdle" is the widest edge of the stone) so that I have enough metal to rub over. You can see here that the edge of the mount is now nice and thin from having the seat ground down. At this stage in the photo, I still have to take the height down a bit, as there is too much metal to push over.

You can see the ring is now held firmly in the Ring Clamp and I am pushing the edge over from opposite points with my pusher, bit by bit until the edge is snug against the stone all around. Only then do I push any visible lip down against the stone in a downwards push, before finally rubbing around in one direction with my burnisher....just as we did at the end for this setting. 

In case you're not sure, this gizmo above, is a ring clamp and makes holding rings while you set stones a much easier job than simply holding the ring with your hand.

So here is the mount after pushing, but before burnishing and below you can see the mount after burnishing.

Job done. Do remember that this is just one way of making this mount, there are variations. Every jeweller has a different way of doing it and has tips to share...good luck!