Unique inlay technique...

[Doc Mark]

Andy, this is a clever technique that one can keep in mind for those tough little areas that simple wire or sheet doesn't quite work. What I'm not sure of is, are you pounding in a single gold sphere at a time, or are you placing several spheres side-by side within the inlay cutout and pounding them all in together at once?

 

[AndrosCreations]

Thanks Doc... I have a small shallow lid that I pour some of the beads into. I "drill" all the holes in the area I'm working on and get all the undercuts in place... then I take my tweezers and pick up a single bead, set it in a hole, and take the opposite end of my tweezers and squish the ball down into the hole (similar to how a doctor would use a tongue depressor, which is shaped just like the opposite end of my tweezers). Now if I see any inflammation or infection in the back of the throat, I do a swab and culture it in the appropriate medium... (oops, wrong topic)...

So essentially, I place the bead with tweezers, press it down with the back of the tweezers, and then grab another bead, set it in place, press it down and repeat until the area I'm working on is full. Then I take my pneumatic tool and hammer the whole mass of them and try to spread them appropriately... like trying to spread peanut butter evenly. Not once during the whole project did a bead pop out of place... and I can be fairly negligent and sloppy with my work.

I do one area at a time because smooshing the balls in with the end of the tweezers just holds them there very temporarily, and I don't think they're that securely locked into the undercuts. Therefor, I don't temporarily set beads in the whole workpiece this way but only a small area at a time... Maybe about the area of the size of the picture attached.

I'm trying to think about how many of them I can set in place in a minutes time... probably 4 or 5... 6 if things go smoothly. They're easy to drop though... I probably dropped 10 to 15 on this project... but that's only around a dollars worth of gold. [28 gauge is around $2.50 an inch] [Each ball is about 1/32 of an inch].

I hope that helps!

 

[mitch]

here's a thought- instead of picking them up with tweezers, try licking the underside of a flat graver (maybe #40-42 or so), sticking the ball to the graver, then mashing it in place. if the balls are tiny enough they should adhere to a dab of spit long enough to pick 'em up and put 'em down... (saliva is the engraver's "do everything liquid"!)

 

[AndrosCreations]

Mitch... Sounds like a great idea and could expedite the process. I'll have to try that!

 

[Willem Parel]

Great idea Andy, thank you for sharing.:clapping:
When it is useful to have the balls in equal size you can make a cutting tool out of an old sliding calipers.
Or if you aren't able to do that yourself there must be someone with a milling machine or something.
You can cut easely all the pieces in one size.

 

[Chujybear]

Have you tried it without balling up the gold? Just straight chunks?

 

[gantzi]

Hi Andy,

Thanks for the inlay tutorial.
There is an easy way that I use to make granulation:
1. I place a piece of metal on my table as a spacer (in this case 0.8 thick)
2. I hold my clippers on the spacer.
3. I hold the wire vertically and place it on the table and with the clippers on the spacer I can cut the same length of wire every time.
4. Then I place all the pieces of wire on a charcoal brick (can be bought at jewelry supplies stores, or you can just burn a spot on a piece of scrap wood) and heat them with the torch.
5. When heated on a charcoal, the wire pieces form to perfect balls and you can heat dozens of them at once, and the balls don't jump.

I hope this helps.
Guy