Trying to get ready for the weekend...

We are going to be at a small art festival this weekend and the last festival we are doing this year! You can check it out at http://artsontheave.org/tag/kaleido-festival/ . I am hoping for good weather this year  as last year the wind was unbelievable! We had products blowing down the street and everything was covered in dirt. We couldn't reuse most of our earring and pendant cards from the event. With the cards we use to hold the items I have found they last for up to 12 or 13 uses, but after that event we have to attach all the products to new cards (as well as clean up all our products :) ).

I am trying to finished some more rings for this weekend, which are my shield style copper rings.

These pictures are ones with a small ring band. I will hopefully put up a couple of pictures of the LARGE shield rings with the thick patterned bands in a couple of days.

I usually only make rings every couple of months because of the extremely long process of making the rings, but I have a order from a new store that wants to carry a couple of rings in Kimberly, British Columbia. The store is called the Gilded Goat and from what the store owner told me, the store sounds really unique and filled with tons of treasures. I will definitely have to stop by and see the gilded goats on the ceiling next year during festival season in B.C.

I am also completing another ring order in this bunch of rings for a store in Edmonton! I will post the pictures of the items as soon as I complete them and they are in their store.

I got a new tool recently for around $200.00(shipping not included) to help me out with the production of ring shanks. It is the Jump Ringer™ Finger- or Toe-Ring Mandrel Set.

I bought this tool thinking that it would fit my old style Jump Ringer System. But sadly it doesn't! The chuck does not fit the end of the mandrels... It would have been nice for the website to say the mandrels would not fit in that particular style of jump ringer system.  So I rechecked the online store where I got it from and a new chuck system was going to cost almost $100 without shipping. Instead of buying this new Jacobs-chuck winder that fits 1/2" mandrels I went to Princess Auto and bought a key less chuck for $11.99 and made my own turning device for under$30 CDN.  The sales guy at the store looked very skeptical that I even knew what a Jacobs keyless chuck in the first place and appeared to humor me by showing me two different styles and where they were found in the store. It probably didn't help that I got Tanner to ask the salesman then interrupt him and ask myself :). Next time I will just ask myself immediately when I enter the store as I really hate wasting time looking for things...

Now I can do a higher amount of the simple ring bands( although not specially shaped bands for the shield rings).  Since we do almost everything ourselves we are constantly looking for neat tools that can help us keep the costs down for our customers and allow us to spend more time on the design process of our creations. I noticed after that I needed an additional item(four sided coil holder) to use the saw blade for my flex shaft. I think I will have to skip on this for a while and just hand saw them.

 I bought the Knew Concept Jeweler’s Hand Saw in March 2010 and it is just an excellent upgrade from a standard jeweler's saw. The saw itself is very light weight and very stiff. This two features help keep the blade from breaking (even cheap practice blades take longer to break). The blade fits into a screw tightened top which allows for quick release and replacement of the blade when I am doing highly pierced pieces. I was noticing the regular jeweler's saw was getting too difficult for me to use, mostly because I would have to tighten the top and bottom so tight to keep the blade intact that I would strain my fingers (especially after a long spree of wire wrapping). Anyways I am a little off topic of the ring mandrels from Jump ringer, but this is a great tool to use as an alternative to the saw attachment to use with a flexshaft.

Anyways.... I could probably talk about every tool I own and it's +s and -s but I am getting tired!