A Better Technique For Hand Making Collets?!

how's it going guys welcome back to the diamond mount channel if you're new to me thanks very much for watching um i'm building chris bilton a jeweler from london i was a jeweler for 23 24 years there and now i live in japan since last year so i've got time i'm still jeweller but uh kind of self-employed but i've got spare time now so i've got my little setup here and i'm making jewelry instructional making videos for youtube so i hope you like it right uh my last video that went live i'm making collets so i got this little cone shape this is the one i made in the video uh one comment on that video was i was this is from matthew andrew budge says i was wondering if you could cut a piece of sheet the diameter of the collet you want to make with a hole in the middle and then punch it out uh so it wouldn't have a solder join and it's sort of like how they make coin rings i've seen the coin rings i've never watched one of the videos i don't really know how to make it so yeah imagine get a coin bang a hole in it cut a hole in it and then just hammer it out horizontal so yeah with that in mind from your description matthew andrew budge uh you said cut uh i imagine you're imagining cutting a little circle that shape that size and then just hammering it and pulling it out i don't think that's gonna work it's gonna be too severe amount of stretching on the metal might be difficult to gauge how thin is going to go so the way i'm thinking of trying it is having like this is a washer i found like it's going to be like a flat disc like that with a smaller hole so basically a small hole i'll try and replicate this basically um small hole and then that much distance away from the holes there's going to be a disc that makes sense like at that point wide so not not too not too dissimilar from that with a smaller hole and then we should be able to force that down into a cone shape but if it works might be a handy thing to know one day if you really need one with no solder join or you haven't got pliers or something i don't know it might be useful so it's just fun to try new things all right so i've got my little bit of plate i'm about to about to turn into that circle if you're interested if you want to have a go at this same as me it's 0.95 thickness it's not too thin but it's not too thick as well so i've got it'll easily go in the cone basically and just to make my life easier i decided to make sure my circle fits inside that just so i can hammer it down into the biggest hole just for convenience that if actually making a collar like this very difficult to end up with a one the exact size you need because you'll be if you're making a piece of jewelry you're going to be making it a collet for a stone uh you need it to end up an actual size so straight away as a bit of a problem bit of an issue i've got with this technique can't really understand the size of the collet you're going to end up with but let's just see if it works first of all this is how quickly and roughly i'm working okay what's that it's about it's about that big okay this is going to go in there easy so i'm going to do the maximum i can and that about in the middle there you go my dividers too big let's cut that out i might cut this out and change it to fast forward like the youtube videos i was dissing so hey voila okay little bruce bonus top tip in the video if you're ever making a disc for whatever reason not very often you make a disc but it happens uh to get it really perfectly round find something where it just sits above the edge and you can tap it into like this one i've got really unfortunate size here it's not quite right i'll file cut it out as accurately as you can file it to improve it little lumps and just tap it down into something you haven't got to go right in there but just take just sort of dent in the edge perfectly round take the corner off slightly it's not really sitting in there very nicely and that should look pretty pretty disky so very little work make a disc i know you can't buy them but just make stuff if you can it saves you money and it's all good experience all right i've got no idea what what that's going to fold up to but quite a small hole there so i'm just going to drill it out i'm imagining that punch is going to go into the hole and open up a little bit if this works at all so i'll just drill it a little bit just to get it going nice sharp drill check out my how to sharpen the drill video or i might open up a little bit more so i've got my disc cut a hole quite badly in the middle uh i'll knead it again and then i'll start whacking it into the into the collet punch see what happens i feel i feel nervous some reason uh i think the only trick to this is keeping it vertical i don't want to start hammering at funny angles and uh i don't know i i recommend having something underneath your metal block i've got this bit of flooring tile the same bit of carpet i've used since it was the first thing i used when i started my apprenticeship and it's uh it's been quite good to me i recommend it because when you're hammering takes a bit of the vibration out of it so all the things on your bench don't jump around you don't like scare people out of skin when you suddenly hammer something uh also another benefit is like using this punch if it goes through like i can feel it hitting the carpet there if i'm hammering down the point has got a bit of a bit of suspension there so it's not going against the hard bench so it looks after the point of your punch it's coning up quite nicely all right this competitor's gone rock hard but so far it's working all right i'm going to kneel it and then do a bit more the hole is really taking a beating should have made a bit smaller it doesn't know not quite maybe i'll start on this one okay i'll kneel it again and then uh and i'll go on this hole okay i kneeled still red up don't care go on get in there come on it's opening up the bottom half more than reducing the top kind of obviously but i'll anneal it let's keep going all right it's kind of working let's see if i can force into that one now have some of that here we go very big can we go there not quite i mean this is massive i mean it sort of works but that's kind of that's kind of it i've uh reached its full potential for spreading out unless i uh get it down there but it's just going to balls up that top bit on that edge i'll tell you what i'm going to try again with a much smaller little disc and see if i can end up with a collet a bit more sensible size but yeah basically yeah that's worked alright so let's try this a tiny version i put a very small hole just a drill hole in the middle just enough to grip for that point to grip into because that one just went massive so i now know that the outer diameter didn't really reduce that much just just the difference i could change the tops and uh yeah the bottom basically it was formed by just stretching out the bottom half loads let's try a smaller one but i like no solder joins because that means you didn't have to do a solder i don't like soldering and also it's just nice to not have a join and got to worry about any little line showing up when you're polishing and stuff just a general around a stronger thing so i'm just going to repeat what i did before just keep annealing it and then hopefully end up with a nicer collet this time okay this one was fast this is only my second anneal now it's kind of finishing it so there you go again it totally brutalizes that bottom hole but this one's much more much nicer shape without doing so let's have a close look at what we got uh yeah this one huge so from what i learned i could make it one a bit more normal this is the one i made in the video old school usual way this is the hammered out one it's a brutal technique but it does kind of work um if i was actually going to use this i'd have to take quite a lot off that top because that edge is quite beaten up and wavy for some reason so i'd lose a lot of height which might cause me a problem i might have ended up with something a bit too shallow for what i need but you can't deny that that's a collet that's a proper little cone shape the old school way a lot more control you can definitely end up with what you need you've got more control of the height you've got more control of the diameter this one a little bit of guess work but then you could work out the maths to do do one measure it before after there might be an element of pushing it down into the into the sockets more than actually hammering it out so it's got potential i think it's i learned something today it might come in handy one day if i really need that shape without a solar join it was quite quick as well the small one so there you go matthew andrew budge thanks for the inspiration for a little video a little quick time pass for me uh i learned something as well like i didn't i never thought of that of trying it that way but it you end up with collar it does kind of work um if you're gonna have a go at making a collet what i learned today is what i thought was gonna happen say that's my disc i thought it was gonna do this that didn't happen what happened was this it just pushes out the the bottom a lot more which is kind of obvious because you know the point it's only touching near the point so you're just hammering that down so i should have figured that out uh and also start with a very small hole you just need enough for the point to hold its position and then it opens up the minimal amount and that's quite a normal size hole i ended up with at the end so that was that was cool so it does work but there's you lose a bit of control of what you're going to end up with i think i'm still sticking with the tradition traditional methods it's uh a proper way to make it but i can't deny you end up with a collet it's really fast to make as well just the time cutting out moving out a bit of metal cutting out the disc and a bit of hammering i was really fast that second one so yeah cool it works and uh just to refer back to a video i made a couple of weeks ago it was a two-part video making ovals uh my my enemy my oval shaped collets i obviously found this in a shop so this was great this has got ovals all these different sizes and there's eight points marked out top bottom left right and the corners so this is going to be useful i think next time i try an oval which i'll do one soon so i want to practice them i'm going to use this as a guide i think it's going to help me a lot and i've got circles triangles and squares like what do you need and if you're interested this is staedtler this is from japan yeah but staedtler is a brand i'm sure i've seen that in in the uk sounds with german dutch or something code is 97603 if you want to look up this if you want to buy it online or something but yeah ovals with the corners marked out love it cool right yeah thanks for watching just uh thank you to the uh matthew thomas butch so yeah it's always fun to try new things uh yeah i learned something today but i never knew i never thought of doing that so that was cool that worked and uh might might come in useful in the future might not don't know that's just fun to try anyway i like trying new things and i have actually got an idea for making something which i've never done before never been taught never seen it done but the way what i'm going to do is i won't say what i'm going to do because it's going to be for a future video but it's a technique that will enable you to [Applause] get perfect beaded solder joins around something that's going to be like impossible to polish or cut back or use files on at very awkward little angles and that will enable you to get a really perfect solder join quite easily so i'm hoping that works i'm looking forward to try that that'll be a video i'm doing very soon probably next week but yeah that's it cool thanks for watching hope you liked it click like subscribe hit that bell and then um see you next time for more diamond mounting bye

Channel: Diamond Mounter

Views: 6,363

Rating: 4.9405203 out of 5

Keywords: cbilton jewellery, diamond mounter, collets, make jewellery, new technique, tools, bobby white, pablo cimadevila

Id: 0eY8Rw7mPbU

Length: 16min 21sec (981 seconds)

Published: Fri Oct 23 2020