Metalsmith Society is a community on Instagram where jewelers share jewelry making tips. On this podcast Metalsmith Society founder and author Corkie Bolton discusses tips from the Instagram page, provider deeper insights, answers questions, and highlights bonus content often shared by community members in the comment section.
In today’s episode I am discussing some of the product recommendations shared by our community that I purchased as soon as they sent me the tip. Everything from a mini vacuum that collects your precious metal dust, wooden storage drawers for your stone hoard, an inexpensive solution to store your stamp collection and a tool that has gone viral in the jewelry space.
This episode’s sponsor is CANVAS Lamp, it is my favorite tool to capture videos for social media. They are giving our community 10% off their order with code: SOCIETY10 https://canvasfam.co/3YQplyl
Where To Find Recommended Tools and Supporting The Page
Corkie Bolton:
Welcome to Jewelry Making Tips with Metals mith Society, the ultimate podcast for anyone passionate about the art of jewelry making. I'm your host, Corkie Bolton. Metals mith Society is a community on Instagram that has over 240,000 individuals, from professional jewelers to small business artisans, hobbyists, students and even those curious, lucky lose eager to learn about jewelry making. Together we share tips, kindness and support. In this podcast, I will discuss tips from the Instagram page, provide deeper insights, address questions and share bonus tips that often surface in the comments section. So, whether you've been making jewelry for a while or you're just starting your jewelry making journey, this podcast is your go-to resource for all the jewelry making tips. So grab your tools, dust off your workbench and join me. In today's episode, I'm discussing some of the product recommendations made by our community that I purchased as soon as they sent me the tip. Like before I even shared the tip, I'd already bought them Everything from a mini vacuum that collects your precious metal dust, wooden storage drawers for your stone hoard, an inexpensive solution to store your stamp collection and a tool that has gone viral in the jewelry space. Before I get to today's jewelry making tips, I want to tell you about my Canvas lamp. It's my favorite tool to capture videos for social media hands down. I personally purchased two of them with my own money and I use them to shoot process videos, to share tips with our community and for my jewelry business to give customers a peek at my process. I am so excited to have partnered with Canvas to give our podcast listeners and community members 10% off their order with Code SOCIETY 10, and I will link that in my show notes.
Corkie Bolton:
The first community tip I'm sharing today is from Rusty Creek Designs and it's for the cutest mini vacuum. And in this tip, rusty Creek Designs uses this mini vacuum to collect silver dust from the bench area, from the drawer, from the top of the bench pin, from the top surface. And, like I said, I immediately bought one of these and it's fantastic. I've used it to also clean up wax if I'm carving and there's wax dust everywhere, little wax particles and no joke. I also brought one into my kitchen and I have my six and eight year old use it to kind of clean up their crumbs sometimes.
Corkie Bolton:
This small vacuum measures about three inches by three inches, so it's small and it's sort of in the shape of a square that has rounded corners. There are options to use AA batteries, and some of them are rechargeable. So if you're interested in it and you go to the link, make sure you know what you're getting. I have the one that's rechargeable, and so I can plug it in and give it some juice when I need to use it. It has bristles on the bottom, so it's not going to scratch any surfaces. It's also used on keyboards and has a bunch of other applications around the office, but super easy to use, super easy to pull apart, and then you're left with your metal dust. In this instance, you can then pour it into your refining bin, and it makes all of that super easy. There was a fantastic comment with this post from Kiss the Moon Designs. They use this little vacuum as well, and they use it to clean up a namel that spills in front of their kiln, and I think that's another fantastic idea.
Corkie Bolton:
One of the most commonly asked questions that was brought up by this tip is people that were asking about what to do with metal dust, and so that lets me know that there are a lot of members of our community that still aren't sure about how to refine, and so I do want to link you to my blog article all about refining metal, and I have multiple different companies that you can send dirty bench sweeps to. In this instance, when you're using this little mini vacuum, anything that's inside is probably going to be considered dirty bench sweeps, because it's probably not going to be just pure metal dust, and so in that instance, you want to call one of these companies that takes dirty sweeps. They will send you a refining bucket and this is where you would pour the contents of not only this little mini vacuum, but if you're also vacuuming the floor or sweeping the floor of your studio, which I'm sure we're all regularly doing, right, I will link the refining article in the show notes if you want to learn more about that. Alright. So the next tip I want to talk about is pretty much infamous by now. It's the pastel wooden boxes shared by Dang Brave Girl back in 2019. I feel like these boxes have been around with us for as long as Metal Smith Society has been a thing. So these pastel wooden boxes are so perfect for storing cabochons and faceted stones because they have very shallow drawers, so you can fit a lot of drawers on a tabletop and you can put a ton of stones in them. And so, since Jamie from Dang Brave Girl shared this tip so generously very long ago.
Corkie Bolton:
There have been a multitude of ways that the community has built upon this tip over the years. People have painted their boxes, you know, just to make them look cool. In their studio They've been lined with felt, which isn't a bad idea because if you put a felt in the bottom you're less likely to have a stone scratch against the wood. If you have some particularly delicate cabochons, we've had people remove the inside dividers in case you wanted to put larger stones or if you wanted to put your stones themselves onto cards with the information written. You know how much the stone cost, what type of stone it is and you want a little bit more space to fit that in, you can remove the dividers. Some people add additional dividers as well. And then the other tip I love that was built upon this tip is to use a label maker to add labels to the outside. So, for example, you could label that one drawer contains turquoise, or you could label that this drawer contains cabochons from this particular company or lapidary artist. I also use my drawers to hold some tubing and gallery wire, and so I also have that labeled in my studio. I'm a huge fan of these drawers and super grateful to Dang Brave Girl for sharing them. I'll link them in the show notes.
Corkie Bolton:
This next tip is for those of us that have a large collection of stamps. So this was shared by AeroBwraps. You know I hope I'm saying that correctly I kind of really relate with those Peloton instructors that are trying to say people's username. Sometimes you're just not sure where to put the emphasis, so I don't know if it's AeroBwraps or AeroBwraps, so I apologize about that. But your tip was brilliant. This was shared back in the day and they used an ammo box to store their stamps. And when I tell you, I bought this ammo box and the stamps fit in there perfectly, I have my stamps facing up so I can see exactly what I have and what I need to grab. Alex also shared in this tip that they use silica bags. You know the ones that come when you buy a new pair of shoes or something like that. Those are definitely a really good thing to save because you can put them in your bench drawers where you're keeping your tools files. You can keep them in your ammo box in this instance because those are going to help reduce rust. So definitely save those every time you come across them. Elizabeth Space also shared using an ammo box, but she removed the lid and she stores other small hand tools as well, and I will link that tip as well if you want to see exactly how that looked and what tools she was storing in hers.
Corkie Bolton:
The last community tip I wanted to share today was one of the first tips to have gone viral back in 2018. The year I started, Metals mith Society At Petercat Jewelry shared a tool she had discovered in a printmaking class a pipe deburring tool. So if you're not familiar, a pipe deburring tool is a small hand tool. It's probably about seven inches long and it's got a plastic handle and the top has this little curved-looking metal piece that rotates, and what it's used for is to deburr pipes. So when pipes get a little sharp edge, this can get ran inside the interior and it'll remove that. And so this tip is to create that rounded inside of a ring using this pipe deburring tool. And it's awesome because, holding your ring firmly and rotating this tool around the inside of a ring, it gets a nice clean cut and really removes the metal evenly in a way that creates less scratches than if you were gonna file it. So since this tip has been shared, I feel that it's also become infamous, and lots of jewelers have been using the pipe deburring tool, so I'm so appreciative that this was shared and again, it's one of those tools. I bought it right away and I've now been using it for years and years.
Corkie Bolton:
An easy way to find all these tools is the Metals mith Society Amazon storefront.
Corkie Bolton:
But before I get into that, I just want to mention that if you find any of these tools at a local small business, please do that. I'm always all about supporting small business and since there are small businesses on Amazon, I always try when possible to link those businesses so that we can support them as well. Each purchase you make from the Amazon storefront does give back to the page a little bit, so I appreciate your support. You will find the link to it in the show notes and you can also follow me on there and get updates when I create a new list. Currently I have lists for safety equipment, jewelry making books, shipping and packaging and more, so definitely be sure to check that out. If you don't already own a copy, you can find my book Metals mith Society's Guide to Jewelry Making on Amazon as well, and if you have the book and you love it, please consider leaving me a review. It really helps others find the book. Thank you for joining me Till next time.
