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Things That Don't Exist

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Categories: Rants; Experiences and daily life; Projects and equipment

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Some items on my want list will stay there forever. Most of them are tools, some are products, but apparently none "exist" in the real world.

My parents got me a really cool present for my second birthday and within hours it was in pieces. Fishing reels, bicycles, and anything mechanical have a short half-life as they are methodically disassembled and reassembled. Most make it back into usable form.

Man has been making rings, bracelets, and similar objects for thousands of years. The basic needs of ring making haven't changed. Nowadays we have many technologies at our disposal: casting, forging, die-stamping, 3-D printing, CNC machining, deposit welding, electroforming, and more. Of course, don't forget soldering, brazing, fusing, and welding.

In basic rings, a strip of metal is shaped around a mandrel or die such that the two ends align without a gap. This "no gap" joint is critical to soldering as the best and strongest joints are the ones with complete contact. This means extra work for handmade pieces: cutting a blank, forming it, checking for fit, filing, checking again, grinding and sanding until it is acceptable, cleaning, soldering, pickling, re-cleaning, etc.

Cutting the blank can introduce small deviations especially when done free-hand. If you cut a ring and stretched the wire out, the ends would be angled, not straight. Some quick math proved the cut angle was always the same regardless of size or thickness. A fixed jig would work though an adjustable one would be far nicer.

OK, so where's this jig - someone had to have made one by now, right? Dozens of phone calls and internet searches came up empty. There are cheap, adjustable ones for some hobbies but nothing for jewelry. Why, in the thousands of years of ring-making, has no one thought of this?

An instructor at a jewelry school said it wasn't something that would appeal to many people. Pardon my disbelief, but a tool performing the quintessential function in jewelry or ring manufacturing would seem vital, not a convenience.

A ring cutting tool can run into problems. Metal distorts to varying degrees as it's bent into (the round) shape. The angles at the end change and skew, get deformed from forging it around the mandrel or die. Thicker metals and tighter radii distort the most but how they're shaped also changes their profile. Overall it results in less sanding and filing but will never be a hands-free.

I quickly made a jig from some scrap hardwood. Granted, it's a wooden block that is little more than a crude reference guide for a file. Over time it will evolve and continue to be useful enough to keep it in the toolbox.

Posted by M: June 23, 2016

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