Craftsman polishing technique

Many products are lined up in jewelry shops

The surface is uniform and glossy like a mirror.

Look at the jewelry that is casually lined up in the shops.

Although it's beautiful, have you ever thought it is expensive?

In fact, all the experience and skills of the craftsman's life are condensed into each one.

Doesn't the way you feel about the price change a little? (^^)

So, this time, I would like to write about the process of one of the tasks, "polishing", using a ring as an example.

First of all, the basics of polishing is to apply the coarse file and then the fine file in this order.

It ’s about scraping the surface and bringing scratches to the invisible level.

Like when you draw the black end of the grayscale that you learn in an art class with a pencil

By overwriting with scratches (lines) on the top of the scratches (lines), the gaps are finally filled and it becomes slippery.

At first, observe the scratches you want to erase and decide the fineness of the file to be used according to the depth of the scratches.

If the file you select here is too coarse, it will take time and effort because you will need to use many files from coarse to fine to very fine to extremely fine in this order gradually increasing the finest of the files.

On the other hand, if you first select a file that is too fine for the scratch, it will take time and effort because the file cannot reach the deepest part of the scratch because the depth that can be scraped is shallow.

Therefore, it is surprisingly important to choose which degree of coarse file to choose first.

After choosing a file, I will polish it.

Hold the ring firmly and fix it to the railing plate, and hold the file with your dominant hand.

If you do not hold the ring firmly here, the force of the file that hits the ring will not be stable.

It cannot be polished to an even shape forever. .. ..

After holding the ring firmly,  use the thumb of the hand holding the ring as a guide for the path through which the file passes.

File the surface from the front to the back as if drawing a single line along the shape of the ring.

You don't need strong power. Use the weight of the file,

Rub with the entire file while feeling the surface to be scraped with the index finger holding the file.

The file has a blade direction like a saw, and you can polish the ring efficiently and beautifully by pushing it from the front to the back.

When using a file, some people tend to move it back and forth.

This means that when the file is pulled, it is moved against the direction of the file blade, which reduces work efficiency and at the same time, the file itself is quickly damaged due to the severe wear of the file.

Another thing that inexperienced craftsman tends to do is to intensively polish the scratched part.

If you do this, when you look at the whole ring, it will have a distorted shape with only one part dented.

Therefore, it is necessary to file not only the scratched part but also the whole part while shaping it.

This is a ring with a dome shape that requires basic skills to polish it without waste while keeping the overall shape even.

The thickness of the dome shaped ring is even, no matter where you measure it from side to side or up and down.

The rounded part has a curve of the same angle no matter where you look,

And the condition is that the apex of the roundness is the highest and all are at the same height.

The dome shaped ring is also one of the content of the third grade test of the precious metal jewelry manufacturing technician, and the test is conducted within ± 0.1 mm.

Polish in the same direction, with a constant rhythm, with a constant force, while looking at the overall shape ...

If you repeat this, the correct file sound will reverberate in the workshop.

When you become an experienced craftsman, just by listening to the sound of the file

you can know what the craftsman is doing and what he is doing wrong.

Also, it is possible to know the level of the skill of the person who us making the ring and the quality of the entire workshop just by listening to the sound of the file .....

Even if it looks like it's just being scraped, it's actually just polishing, and in fact, the experience and techniques of successive craftsmen are accumulated, and the current jewelry is lined up in the shop.

When you go to the next shop, while checking the price,

it would be great if you could see the beauty of the jewelry itself which the craftman has made with deep feelings  (^^)