How to Make an 8 Claw Rex Collet

how's it going guys welcome to the diamond matter channel if you're new to me thank you very much for clicking on this video asked for a few guides on uh making collets for specific shaped stones so i know a few variations of collets on on all the shapes of stones and um it just goes on forever early especially the round stone you can you can do loads of things with them so i'm going to start with a collet which i actually don't like at all it's a rex collet yeah do you know the rex collet it's like like known as a eight claw kind of looks like zigzags going around the outside and it was an old-fashioned horrible ugly collet when i started making jewelry and i was in the late 90s so it's a well old fashioned design and i hate it but you can you can do it in a way that looks alright and looks good doing the same technique in sixth claw looks really nice but the the eight claw rex collet a really horrible thing but i'm gonna i'm gonna show you how to make one and then make it kind of as good as it possibly can if you like the a-claw rex collet fine i won't try and change your mind but uh i've always hated it just for kind of no particular reason just don't like it uh so anyway we're gonna make one today i've got this chunk of metal i'm just gonna doesn't need to be hugely deep it's like a four mil kind of square bit of white i'm just gonna run that long basically we're gonna do the usual getting a flat bit of metal making it kind of similar to that this is i would nearly use this but it's a bit too thin for my liking uh get it get a nice long strip and then we're gonna make a turn into a rainbow shape and then we'll turn it in turn it up into a kind of cone and then we'll work on that cone but it's nice of a bit of thickness this was a bit too thin it was 0.6 i think 0.8 or 0.9 you need a bit thickness because hammer in it using pliers on it then you're papering it like filing off solder joins and stuff and then paper in it and uh it just kind of reduces the whole time and especially if you're making something that's going to be cast because you'll get it cast and then it comes back and you've got paper again and then uh then after polishing you lose even more around the outside to make life easier for yourself start with something a little bit thicker uh i'll get it down to a mill and look at it but i'm i expect to go down to sort of like 0.85 maybe so i've milled it out it's gone just below a mill it's 0.91 and it looks a bit thick the thing seems to look even thicker when you turn them up into a tight little circle it's a little collet see i'm just going to squeeze it down a little bit so what did i say i said like 0.85 but possibly correct maybe 0.8 be all right anyway under a mill just so it's i milled it down i squeezed it down a little bit so it's about point eight which i still think is possibly a little bit thick but it'll be fine uh so i'm just gonna shaquille anneal it a little bit just one last time when you're kneeling get your flame going along the piece here don't go across you can anneal it like that but you're taking longer so you're wasting wasting your gas and and the potential of the whole flame people who've seen me make stuff on the channel before we'll be familiar with these pliers this technique we're basically turning this strip into like a rainbow shape best way to describe it so with the pliers half round pliers usually jewelers half round pliers are this size uh for doing this i like using extra large ones which you can't buy as far as i'm aware so i made these these are just a cheap pair of pliers like this just buy them second hand and then you need a proper grinder grind off one side as best you can to get it rounded and then i've cut two grooves in there as well which holds holds the metal in position because without that groove you can do it but without a groove it's more prone to sort of snapping shut like that so pliers whatever you got the rounded section is closest to you they're nice and secure against your peg you need some parallel pliers next this is a levering point there is a levering point so that and that i'm gripping quite tight there reasonably tight with this one there you go it's levering it up this is what i said you need a longer than you need for the collet a bit of metal because the extra length really helps you out getting a curve on this don't try and curve it really tight on the first attempt i i work along it and uh get a certain curvature and then i'll anneal it and then go back the other way and tighten tighten it up if you can tweak it and move it along the same route every time you should end up with a reasonably even curve it's never perfect but don't worry about it what i do is i work from one end and then before like way before i get to the further end i'll turn it around and start working back the other way i've been doing a lot of this curving metal lately because i'm moving into the world of contemporary jewelry so i'm experimenting with curves and putting things together and changing angles and i'm really enjoying it i do like i do like this so i'm working on pieces that will be something along the lines of that i'll do a video in the future when i've got a proper finish thing nailed i'm putting quite a tight curve on mine because my collet punch i've only got one it's a really steep angle which i don't like more often than not don't like it so i need to replace that or get another one so i'm going to tighten mine up quite a lot but depends on your collet punch depends on how much you do it there's no like real rule like real strict rule about how much to do it but just experience just just do this kind of thing using all your tools and you get to know it pay attention to what you're doing how much you're curving it and the next time you'll know exactly what to do or what not to do and same as always i'm setting a bad example for curving up too much metal you don't need all this metal for a normal size collet probably need about that much so um yeah i like to curve a lot more because you've got the extra leverage but there's always a section which you like more than the others like this is a bit too straight so i'm kind of drawn to this little section here i think that might be my bit i cut out but yeah if you're working in gold or something expensive uh bear in mind what you what you need and don't need i want my second cup of tea since i started this i don't like them keep procrastinating so go on let's get on with it so i'm going to cut i like this little section of curvature i'm expecting to use about that amount i'm going to cut at an angle imagining that is the edge of a circle my blade will not be like this or like this i'm imagining that blade going down to the middle if that if that inner edge was a circle my blade will go through the middle of it boom same as putting the curve that way i do it a little bit and then tighten it up i think it's a good idea to put a gentle curve along this metal try and get it kind of even even steven so i've moved to these pliers now i always use these in my videos and i always say i don't know what they're called it's like a half snipe half flat and when you buy them there's like usually a plastic piece there i very quickly squashed that and it all wore out and fell off i replaced it with a piece of nickel which i put like a little bar in it and then just tapped it down riveted on and that's just lasted forever it's lasting really well using this one to tighten it up rather than just rolling it up from one end like i rolled up that first bit and then i kind of skip a section and then start tightening it up from from there it just makes it easier to finish it off nicely and i've almost got an oval there and i just sort of close up that oval and you end up with a sort of something a bit a bit like a circle so um i was just thinking yeah i'll do this collet and then i could do another video on joining the collet to a little under bezel because that's quite tricky to do nicely i wish i had a kind of specific method for doing this like tighten it up here adjust it there and then close it up i don't really i just i do what i said i've already did and uh then i just fiddle with it to get it right i mean what is making jewelry really is just fiddling about bits of metal that's what if i had to explain making jewelry in a nutshell after 20 years experience that'll be it just fiddling about so i'm tightening up this curve now so i can wrap the other one around a bit tighter just reduce it a little bit sometimes i pick up my flats squash it a little bit get it get a bit more round again still miles too big but i might i may cut it off this is just where experience comes in handy i know i can cut that there and it will close up just about right for a saw cut to go through the join once or twice and then i'll be the right size but that's relying on my experience i know that's not much use to you if you want actual measurements and stuff and you haven't done it before but just do it just try it learn a lot just trying it once you'll learn far more than i can explain then you just try it once and you'll learn far more than you can learn from listening to me talking about it actually doing is is the learning not just listening to someone tell you how to do it i cut it off at that line i uh i should show you everything um i end up gripping it in there and then just pushing it against my peg to try and get it closed up now it's closed up but one size up one size down so now i've got two pairs of parallels which i find useful loads of loads of times easy with two pairs of parallels just tweak that just right i cut it off i wish i didn't turn the camera off because i cut it off at the little line i scratched on and a bit of a gap in the joint i'm gonna have to cut through that and i think it's gonna be just about right just cutting through it once maybe twice for getting the size correct for a stone don't forget this is a cone shape so the lower the stone goes the less distance there is for for setting so i'm going to make mine so it's just so it's just on the inside edge not necessarily dropping into it but just on the edge and then when it's lowered uh lower down it should be good for setting but there's also an element of the longer your claws are the easier it is to set in my opinion i'm not a setter but just for my little experience i've had setting stones you've got a bit more metal above the stone it makes life a bit easier for you as for soldering it i have got my tweezers in a slot in my peg the old slot and the peg trick see it all the time doing it all the time in my videos uh yeah so just gently squeezing it closed and i will solder up with hard solder now i'm not going to continue with this collet it's not going to be anything i'm just making a collet to show you how i'll do it on the video but if it was going to go in a ring or something it would be a massive benefit to you if it was done in hard solder because then when you're soldering in position in the shank then you're free to use medium and easy without worrying about a line showing up down the side of your collet all right so i've soldered mine up that is a little bit wobbly but with that curve i've given it now i've turned it up it's a little cone shape gives me a head start to bang it into this one now this this one's really tight angle so i'm gonna it's gonna reduce that bottom hole load that doesn't matter i should show you this shouldn't i so that bang that down as far as it can go still not round but the bottom hole has basically just been squashed down so now i'm putting this in with my hand in the way of course give it a couple of bangs right just uh i just gave it a kneel like i've changed the shape quite a lot squashing the uh bottom down the bottom hole down smaller don't if you can see that okay so check this out my stone i mean i need to tap this a little bit more but my stone is just fitting inside there and remember these are claws that have got to go over the top of the stone so saying it's common to get it wrong i may have got my right after tapping a bit more the stone will drop down a little bit it may actually work out okay so i've been doing a bit bang in a bit more banging really punched it out hard as i could in there uh stone drops in there a little bit so [Music] once it's cleaned up a little bit drop down a bit more and then i should end up i should be able to make a collet that's good for the stone and be able to set with that so i shall continue i'm going to paper around it a little bit and let me start cutting it up i don't think there's any kind of strict rules on how to do this just hold it best you can i like to make the top nice and flat [Music] it's a cone here but have a look around it make sure it's not right make sure it's a cone like going to the center not a cone going like that or like that uh you don't want one side more straight than the other it's gonna look horrible when it's in a ring so try and make sure it's a proper mathematically perfect cone so i'm flattening the top now flattening the other side and it's important to get them both parallel because if one is slightly tilted it kind of mucks you up trying to get the claws nice can be more difficult to do than you would imagine you've never done this before and you think i'll just file it that side file that side sometimes it goes against you and it's difficult to rotate it and find where you need to reduce it and when it comes to paper in it these pliers are usually pretty handy just with a wizard let's go around it so this is one of those jobs where i'm sure all jewellers go about it a little bit differently i'll show you what i do uh i tend to just do the whole thing in my hand uh it's holding it at my fingers i did see what's his name pablo pablo sima de villard and i pronounce his name but he's a really talented jeweler he's got a few videos on youtube and they get like millions literally like tens of millions of views so obviously well known in his videos uh he did something which i never thought of i'm surprised in myself i'm not thinking of it but he put you know these uh like screw down mandrels he put that on top and then screwed it down on top and then you could hold that in a pin vice i've worked quite clever i might i may even try that when i'm making this one to try for the first time but usually i just uh just hold on my fingers alright first of all let's get into this i do not want my solder join to be a claw so of all the little bits we're cutting out make sure you're cutting out the solder join so i'll draw my first claw next to the solder join just do a little square with a marker pen and then using my saw blade to see exactly across halfway like a line up halfway across that mark i just put on and then i can't do it looking through the camera screen i'll just just scratch the top a little bit i don't want to cut into it too much because that's going to be a claw so now i've got exactly opposite marked this is for an eight claw yeah we're doing draw a little line on there it might be an idea to draw thin lines and then if you're looking at it when you've got all eight on there you don't like the distance between two you can thicken up your line a little bit one way or the other and make little adjustments and uh it's quite a good way i find to get it correct so there's eight so we do top bottom turn it around do that again and then we've got to do in between them the last four much easier because you've already marked out these hopefully nice and accurately so again i'll just use that and i'll just gently rub my saw blade on there just so i get a shiny little line where i believe is directly top and bottom when you're using your needle files or your paper discs or whatever you can really get them really accurate because you're working much slower you can really tweak it to perfection as you move along but basically i would start like that i'm going to draw on the side an example of the ones like i used to hate i mean it reminded me of just like really awful design stuff in the 70s not that everything in the 70s is awful i don't mean to say that but just they looked so out of date they had like quite a short claw and then they'd have this big v there let's see if i can draw it so they were sort of like this like the gaps underneath were just really big really ugly things it's all like that i think it's far nicer to have a long claw and a little kind of v on the bottom so we've got that versus that so we're doing something a bit more like that if you've got any lines that you don't like i just buff them off but you can use if you don't want to keep paper it over and over i don't blame you uh you can use a bit of acetone on a ear cleaner your earbud thing or a bit tissue you know wipe straight off but i highly recommend using permanent marker pen because uh you're handling it you need it to stay on as best possible okay so i literally cannot remember what i was doing last time i made one of these probably a good three years ago or something like that um so i'm just gonna use my dividers to score a line around it probably what's that two-thirds of the way down from the top so i'm just going to put a gentle line around it might be an idea to buff it opposite directions to where you're scoring your line just so it shows up a bit better i'm gonna battle on with this one okay now i would definitely start cutting down through to make sure you get this right just cut out that solder join one so you should have two claws drawn on the top either side of your shoulder join and i think uh if i remember rightly it was quite common when people when they started making these i think we did these at college everyone was making the claws really short you get a long claw and then you're on your way to the correct finishing it correctly so i'm looking at that top i'm sort of imagining a capital t going straight down from the top at a right angle uh so there's my claw getting that one so i've got that little line that just did with the dividers [Laughter] see what i mean don't know what i'm doing don't know what i'm doing mate all right check this out i just googled it to see what see what they're normally like and uh this is exactly why i hate it just really flat sides stubby little claws it's disgusting i really hate that i've just hated that since i first saw him like 20 odd years ago these ones not as bad but that looks like a casting that's just been really over polished to kind of get some roundedness of the claws it probably started off a bit more like that ah horrible this one's better that's a bit similar to what we're doing today see the claws are longer a bit more elegant bit more like a piece of jewelry blah i hate it it's a fun fact for you they're called rex claw because if you get asked to make one at work when you're a jeweler it wrecks your mood for the rest of the day so what i've done is i've buffed it with my little mini whizzer this way so when i score my line this way it's much more visible so i don't have to push as hard or go around twice like i did last time so i've dropped these right down now so that's a good it's gotta be three quarters of the way down look how far down that is hopefully this works out otherwise i'm making myself look like i don't know what i'm doing which is quite often the case newsflash i always forget this there was a trick i did did it once in my video before and i keep forgetting to do it again but there's a trick i saw on instagram i think it was i think the guy's name was vu vu the jeweler was his account uh i could see in his collets there were like four little sharp little cuts inside the collet and i thought it was a good idea you must have done that to learn learn where the claw should go so you could i'm not going to do it but you could put that in there give it a gentle tap and then it'll score a little line inside your collet where your claws should be uh if you're gonna do it do it gently you don't want a big dent inside but there is one way to check another way you just put it on there see if they line up nicely i just thought this because i'm i didn't try when i was doing in the video last time but i'm just freshening up positions of the claws on top and i remembered i bought this and i still haven't tested it out if you want one of these it's staedler which is a brand you can get all over the world and that's the code you can google it and you'll get a picture of this i just bought in a stationery shop i have to hide these from my kids because they take them and they scribble all over them and then they uh bend them and they're ruined so i bought this one because it's got ovals on it it's got six eight positions around the oval all different sizes so that's going to help me out because if you've seen my channel if you've been watching my videos for a while you'll know i don't like ovals no i don't like them i can't do them so this is not these templates they're a good guide for seeing like what you've done wrong but for actually like holding something in position and then marking it they don't work that well but it's good for checking how you how you're getting on i would say the first four are really important to get really accurate uh because they will be your guide for doing the next four uh i say four because i just think of it as top bottom left and right when i'm drawing these out i would never try and go around it mark it out eight do four and then do four again in between them uh yeah if these four are accurate you should have no trouble at all doing the ones in between it's very easy well very easy it's much much easier to mark out the other ones because you've got the two claws there you just put it in the middle of those yeah much easier to get these nicely but it's only gonna look good if these first four are correct looking at my top edge where my claws are just put a little dot in the middle as my claw goes straight down so i'm imagining that top edge is flat my line going down is a perfect 90 degrees from it so i almost imagine like a capital letter t so there that's that's horizontal that's vertical that's my claw going down might be worth doing this on four i'm just drawing down to my line i scored at the bottom there do on four then when you look it upside down you can kind of get another idea of how accurate is and then make any adjustments as you go along and then same again if you get these four accurately on the side they become a guide for doing the four that sit in between them the second four is always so much easier so what i'm doing is i'm looking i move around again i'm looking at the top one does it line up with the one opposite like that one does it line up with the one opposite and i'll rotate it and move around it yeah not bad next one ooh a little bit dodgy that was a bit better yes all right it could do with improving that's a bit dodgy so i mean every time i look at look at the top one comparing it to the one bottom the bottom one so every single one you compare it like that one needs adjusting just anything like anything i can think of i can do to understand its level of accuracy just to kind of give you an indication what goes on through my mind when i'm working i'm not trying to hold it in a way that i think it looks good and like yeah okay let's continue i'm trying to constantly trying to pick faults in it and if you eliminate all the faults you end up with something good that's my general strategy with making jewelry just constantly trying to find faults with what you're making that sounds pessimistic but it's not it's actually the best route to a good result so i will adjust these a little bit and uh i'm going to start cutting them out now with my lines going down the side i've got my that line i scored with my dividers obviously this point is going to end up in between those two lines i want to go from just above my divider line to the middle so just above my divider line to the middle so i'm doing that on all of them so now i have this going on now obviously they're a bit wonky bit jagged looking we're going to cut it out nicely so do what you've got to do with your marker pen to without ruining your guide maybe thicken it up if you need to maybe you can nice it up a little bit you don't need to do too much and then first first of all we're going to do is going to cut out the shape don't go up to your line like use that save that for your needle files or paper disk or whatever you're using rubber wheels to get it to cut it back slowly slowly up to the perfect position but you can cut out quite a big chunk cut out a section uh what i do is i cut down quite far but then i'm thinking about ending up in the middle in between two claws and then my saw right at this angle so let me just do one it's probably better i'll just show you rather than try and explain it i'm staying away from the claws to begin [Laughter] with so i'm cutting down we're cutting out a v shape here so it's quite important you end up in the middle that line i use the dividers for probably going to stop just above that with my saw at this angle quite a lot [Music] one side done and i'm not going straight down like that i'm just trying to just do this sort of shape i tend to leave myself quite a lot of work to do with the needle files and the rubber wheels and whatnot [Music] let's get rid of that so i've just cut this shape out it's a little bit rough and ready but that'll do it's a good start i would recommend leaving your claws a little bit thick like wide because it gives you room to tidy them all up and get them same if you've got one that's a bit too thin uh you've then basically got to make all of them a bit too thin so they match it's no good having them all nice and then just one thin one it's not good enough that won't especially where i worked this wouldn't accept that you'd have to start again so yeah even a bit wide it helps you out and while i do this to keep you entertained let me put some music on made from my friends over in malaysia check it out okay i'll show you exactly what i'm doing i'm gonna hide nothing from you so you can see all my dodgy craftsmanship putting myself out there for ridicule and abuse uh so yeah filed around it i'd like i said i just wanted to just clip over that line i use my dividers for uh that needs tidying up a little bit they're not all exactly the same uh i went i actually went around it twice yeah i went around it once to get that v section down then i went around it again to try and get that angle the same on all of them because it wasn't the same so now i'm looking at that i'm sort of at a stage i'm happy to move on with but it may need a bit more work paper disk time and before we get this disco started i look down straight on it uh having a look at my gaps uh checking the alignment of the claws again looking i'm looking top and bottom just looking at the one opposite side and seeing how much it lines up because if it's slightly off you may have an opportunity to sort of thin it more from one side rather than the other but if they're quite accurate mine are not too bad uh i can i'm just thinking about straightening them off down the sides both sides an even amount maybe work on one claw at a time so that one yeah so you have to straighten the sides so you see i've worked on these a little bit they're not identical so this one needs to thinning off a little bit to match this one but basically i'm just running this down the sides i'm not worrying about going down to the v we'll square them all off all the way around and then i'll go back to the side and pay attention to that flatten the top again it's nice if you do this because it gives you a sort of cleans it off so you can see more clearly what you've done not perfect but they're looking much better a couple of them that one looks a bit wider so now painting i'm paying attention to the side again you can see i don't want them to start going like wide was a good example but that one started going wide like just there i wanted to come down a bit more before it goes into a v so i want like kind of long vertical claws it should all be vertical as well you shouldn't have one going that way and that way you should try and keep them all straight and parallel to each other now i tend to use this fine little uh needle file let me tell you about it it's one of the smaller sized ones it's f dick what's that looks like ni9 what does that mean yeah n19 it's n19 don't tell me what that means don't ask me what that means uh but basically it's a round it's a smaller one it's got quite a fine kind of teethy on there i do like this because it kind of goes quite kindly in this sort of size collet in the gaps in between if you don't have this uh where's my rubber wheel gone yeah rubber wheel you can actually i talk about uh getting them nice and sharp using a stone you can actually blunt them as well and get a specific shape you need so i would get flat on that and then round it off that'd be great for going around there i probably will do that after filing i would uh definitely recommend trying to do this quite neatly because all every one of these scoops has got be polished out now i don't work with any magnification but i do check what i've just done with under magnification so yeah i can see they're not all going or they're pretty good you know to be honest oh that won't come down a bit more um but yeah just double check your work with a ten times loop and if you make things really accurately through a ten times loop uh if they look good through that then they're gonna look amazing to the naked eye so i like checking solar joins just angles everything with that uh okay next i'm not going to go to a rubber wheel yet i'll get all the cutting and filing done first and then the last sort of stage of tidying up getting ready for polishing will be the rubber wheels and next let's do the bottom half get that looking good okay so no more measuring really but i am still using that uh line we scored the dividers so i'm just going to get my saw blade and then line it up directly down the middle of a claw and then just cut up to that line but not really really cut up to it i'm going to cut quite a quite an angle cutting into it bit of an angle there you go that'll do and if you worked accurately marking them out cutting them out paper them back you haven't really got to worry about lining them up too much now you just go to the middle of a claw and it should all work out nicely but if you're still at this stage making adjustments to your claws you gotta work a bit more carefully but where i've done all my careful working out i can just sort of work quite quickly now top and bottom every time [Music] [Music] yeah i do the top one then i do the bottom one then i turn around and i do the top one and i do the bottom one i'm gonna put the saw blade in both of them at the same time to make sure they're nice and straight and then we're just sort of going in between so you should have something a bit like that next you will need your tri squares your three sided needle files i've got this one which is um i did have a corsa one i used to use but it kind of wore out this one is oh doesn't say it's quite coarse but the teeth are really sharp so it cuts really well um then i go down to this one's a smaller size one which is a cut five i do that it's a bit more a bit more easy to go in on uh actually getting it to sit exactly how you want you'll find in shapes you don't want to don't go up too far or across or anything so that one's good for that job and i've got this one which was a cut six it's a really really old file when i started my apprenticeship it was in this really old firm that's been going since like the 1800s and some old guy i remember i started my apprenticeship some old guy gave me some needle files and then having a conversation with people i worked with like years later uh they asked where i got this one from it's really sharp it's really useful i said like an old guy gave it to me like what old guy he's like just an old man like who was that i never really questioned it before and uh i don't know who it was so i have to kind of con i have to kind of conclude that uh it was the ghost of the man who started the business there that's the only explanation like why why would there be a really old guy just walking about in the workshop and stuff so thank you george uh george gave me this and gave me some needle files and then i swear like this so long ago my memory is fuzzy but i got this old pin vice as well i've got a feeling the ghost gave me this as well there's no other explanation for where it come from like no one else confirmed they gave it to me who worked their years and uh there's this old guys in my mind for giving me some tools to get me started i really appreciate that and all these years later i'm still using it and yeah it's worn out the corners are really sharp but it is sharp so it gets really nice corners cut into things so still a really treasured tool so i really appreciate being given this from the from the other side still very useful now um so yeah i finish it off with this one after i cut the groove how i want it to i finish it off with this really sharp ghost file and get it get it really sharp and nice starting off with my coarser one i work filing up so i'm looking down on it there so i can see exactly what it's doing i don't file this way find it down if that's more comfortable for you go ahead and try it but i like to see what's going on so being careful you don't want to bend your claws about which may be uh easier said than done so i'm still going in at quite a quite an angle i'll just start off with this being careful to go right in the middle of that claw ah i just did a load of this just real i thought i was recording and i wasn't recording so apologies i uh basically did the top i'm going around it doing the top one the turn of 180 do that one and do the corners and i was just saying it's important just like we were cutting down and filing those up to get them all identical to each other do the same with these like file up at the same angle and then go up the side the same amount and uh don't i wouldn't bother trying to do too much at this stage i just kind of i feel like i'm just starting it off with this big file and then the next one i go down to i uh neaten up a lot more but if you haven't got these files you can do a lot with rubber wheels and i mean i recommend getting one of these you haven't got one of these making jewelry it's kind of an essential needle file but if i just had this one i could do the whole job with this no problem now i've gone down to the smaller one i'm not just going to go at the side i'm going to kind of go flat across as well so you want a bit of a gap looking at it from the side not just only that angle you want to be able to see a bit of air underneath it as well so i do that with this one i kind of file up to it obviously but then i flatten it as well and go across the top when i bottom at the same time just to make sure it's definitely getting opened up so i'll just show you my work i don't hide nothing from you that is it in all its glory like fresh from being filed obviously needs a lot of work cleaning up so now to get the tops of these nice and sharp i would go to my ghost file and to sharpen up a little bit uh i would recommend the bottom yeah i would recommend not going to an absolute point uh because if you do that there's a chance you may over sharpen one or two of them and then it doesn't sit flat because it's got to be soldered yet onto a flat little plate or bezel or ring or whatever you're doing with it uh if you leave a little flat there you know that the whole thing should sit really nicely you start sharpening them up it's quite likely you're gonna over sharpen one of them or two of them and then when it sits down flat they won't be touching the bottom which causes you a problem with the soldering is what i was talking about it sits flat every single one will sit flat on that block if i sharpen one up i may over sharpen it and then one will be off slightly and it makes soldering it awkward so i'm going to go around it i've got the basic shape kind of down now i'm going to rub a wheel over it which is another opportunity to make adjustments if you still need to but you should have ironed out any any inaccuracies by now one thing you're doing is keeping this and for another video working with it we're gonna make a little bezel for it how i think looks nice and then talk about soldering it on because it's well tricky and then um yeah i'll do that talk about it more when i do it so i'm going to use my rubber wheel and this is quite a new one it's nice and sharp so while it's nice and sharp i will do the bottom half because these it needs to be sharper to get these right so i'm just going this kind of thing i imagine a lot of jewelers would use magnification for but um i'm quite an advocate for not using wearing glasses or using magnification unless it's absolutely necessary because you're making your eyes lazy you're like training your eyes to need magnification well if i went to an opticians yeah and they told me i need glasses which they probably would because they want to sell some to you uh if i start wearing them it'll be very difficult to go back to not wearing them like my eyes would adjust they become weaker so i'm going to not wear glasses for as long as possible my eyesight's still pretty good it's there just having a look making sure i get a nice sharp point on it and they should look a bit shinier now as well because you've got rid of some file marks okay so that's done this whole thing feels really light now compared to what it was cut so much out of it uh so now i'm going to blunt this a little bit to uh get in there a bit nicer so literally just get my stone good tip when you're doing this sort of thing is i actually blow on it while i'm doing it just so the dust doesn't go this way or it does still go this way a little bit i think i'll do loads anyway uh try it in no i went too far sharp it up a bit more just before i spin it and then just have a look at how it's fitting okay that's nice a little custom rubber disclaimer for my exactly for my collet let's get on each one work very carefully though you don't want to take metal away where you don't want it taken away once i got around it i find uh once you buff it a little bit you will find because you get rid of burs you will find little areas where you can perhaps get a bit more accuracy out of it you can use your little mini whizzer for this but just i like doing it with a corner of a bus stick you can just go right up and down a claw exactly it'll even look much nicer or will expose lots of uh of your dodgy work at this stage maybe in the next video i will talk about polishing it out as well there's a few little specific techniques i use for getting all polished yeah so what mine looks like a couple of them are excessively linings and need a bit more rubber wheeling just a bit more attention down the sides of the claws which makes sense i was only really paying attention to that scoop making sure that was good so yeah it needs a bit more work but this is kind of level i was pushed to work to it's not just cutting it out accurately and doing a bit of filing and paper and it's getting that extra step so everything can be polished every side every angle even like an earring post has to be mirror polished and you're checking it with your loop so uh yeah kind of getting there now i'm just gonna whiz around the inside this would all have to be polished on the inside as well uh always polish your collets before setting because it makes the stone look its best it'd be such a shame like you've set something like a nice white stone and it looked a bit dark or black or something because there was like a stained fire stain inside the metal you didn't polish away and i'm seeing as i go around i'm seeing some bits i can tidy up but i think that'll do for this video i think you're getting the gist of it let me say it just keep going round around it until you're happy with it but i know what it feels like many many many many times i finish things as good as i possibly think i can do it i show it to my boss he checks it over he finds the defaults and then sends it sends it sends me back to the bench with it and i'm like oh so don't just get blinded by your attention to these scoops and those little points you actually want to let your eye follow it up and down like that as well make sure like the thicknesses are the same like all the claws are the same thickness or a bit of lump see things like that i'd be tidying up and there wow what's that's going on here um so yeah just make sure all all really nice all right something else i've done one of these for ages coming back to me a little bit i was about to just tidy up the inside i used to because looking out from the side yeah looking out from the side there's quite a lot of metal there like from the bottom of that scoop to the top is quite a lot so you can hold like a phrase in there and cut in a little bit so that reduces reduces that so that makes the claws a bit longer again straight away so it's another way to get a little bit of extra length out your claws and possibly looks a bit nicer as well looking out from the side so i am sort of feeling like there's too much metal on the shoulder there so i may may do that so that is a rex claw yeah i don't hate that i actually think that's quite a nice thing i guess what i should say is rex claws i hate the ones that you buy in it's just something just so just cheap and nasty about them anyway new patrons we've got a few uh we got uh stephen l natasha williams dan sudden katie hannah sansburn edward wicks thank you guys really really appreciate that if you are interested in supporting the channel's growth then there's a link in the description to go to the patreon site and uh you can click on that and it'll take you to the patreon website and you can read about all the benefits of becoming a patron and it really helps me out immensely to continue this channel and do more and uh getting i enjoy doing the videos anyway you did them for a year before you can get a channel money ties it's not really about the money i used to enjoy doing it anyway even if it's free but with a little bit of money coming in for it now it's really encouraging uh makes me work harder for people to give me money because i'm in service to them now i owe them something something more than i'm already doing so uh yeah it makes me work harder and uh also more patrons they give me ideas all the time so it's just from my own mind i was like drowning in new ideas for videos but now i've got like all these people suggesting new stuff as well so i can't keep up but that's great because it means there's a huge a long future for the channel uh continuously doing new stuff and it's fun to be able to do exactly what people are asking for as well makes it feel more valuable uh yeah cool also one thing uh youtube have now given me an option to create a membership for the dynamite channel which i'm gonna basically mirror the patreon account so no one's getting more for less money nothing like that's gonna go on it'll be the same same benefits for the same cost so i'm setting that up now at the moment and uh yeah so that's a change a new feature is going to happen on the channel hopefully soon yeah cool thanks for watching if you're new to the channel click like subscribe share the video and uh i hope you learned something or if you didn't if you know all this already have a look at other videos might be something that you might learn from and i hope you join me again next time all right

Channel: Diamond Mounter

Views: 14,672

Keywords: cbilton jewellery, diamond mounter, diamond setter, make jewellery, how to make an 8 claw collet

Id: UzVA5fiFSCs

Length: 48min 1sec (2881 seconds)

Published: Sun Mar 28 2021