On Sun, 11 Feb 2007 09:41:37 -0800, in rec.crafts.jewelry MatthewK
wrote:

On Sun, 11 Feb 2007 10:23:21 +0000, ted frater wrote:

Finally the previous writer paid nearly $300 for those small tools?
they saw them coming. Thed be a quarter of that from the tool suppliers
in the Birmingham jewellery quarter tool shops, and not the cheap
chinese copies.

1 Grobet Swiss Made Adjustable Sawframe-2-3/4" (70mm) Deep

1 German Adjustable Sawframe-4" (100mm) Deep
1 Otto Frei 2/0 Sawblades By The Dozen-12 Pieces $
4 Otto Frei 4/0 Sawblades By The Dozen-12 Pieces
4 Otto Frei 1/0 Sawblades By The Dozen-12 Pieces
4 Files-Tell Needle-Set Of 6 14CM Cut 2 Medium
1 Files-Half-Round 5 Inch Cut 2 Medium
1 Files-Hand 6 Inch Cut 2 Medium
1 Mandrel-Ring-Graduated
High Speed Steel Twist Drill Kit 20 Pcs

1 Otto Frei 5-1/8" Mirror Polished Plier Kit Of 4-1 Each Chain, Flat, Round

1 Mandrel-Bracelet-Round 380mm Long 40mm To 90mm Diameter (15" Long 1-1/2"
1 BENCH PIN AND ANVIL COMBO

My total game to 285.00

Do you still think I got hosed? I got the mandrels cause I'm already
beating on metal.......didn't need the bench pin/anvil but it seemed
convienent. Until I decide exactly what types of benches I want. Already
have some coarse files,scribes, punches. All my fine drill bits are gone
and I'm sick of using cheap pliers. Maybe I should of bought those
individually.

I think I did fairly good my self. What should I have done?

matthew
ohio

Ted might still think so. Some of the Tool dealers in London are pretty cheap.
And those of the european made tools you got are probably also cheaper there.

Otto Frei is a good dealer. John Frei, one of the owners is an old freind of
mine who's sold me many many tools over the years, but since it's usually in
person at a SNAG conference or something, I'm usually able to talk him down on
the prices some. Unless something is on sale, Frei's pricing is sometimes
somewhat higher than some of the other dealers. On the other hand, they tend to
carry a somewhat wider range of tools, especially some of the exotic and hard to
find things, and in general, their quality is top notch. Some dealers you'll
find, especially online, carry a lot of tools of lower or questionable quality.
Otto Frei doesn't. If you get it there, you may not get the lowest price on the
planet, you can usually be assured you're buying a top notch tool. ...Usually...
(grin)

But that doesnt' mean you couldn't have spent a good deal less. Some comments
follow.

Saw frames. Stick with the german made traditional ones. Period.
The grobet swiss frame feels wonderful in the hand and is light weight, but
frankly, just doesn't work as well. Their funny little set screw thingys don't
have enough surface area at their front ends to really hold a saw blade well. OK
for the larger blades, but you'll have trouble holding those 4/0 or other finer
blades with it. That's annoying. And threading a blade end into that little
hole is a lot slower than clamping a blade between the clamp plates of a german
frame. Personally, though it may not be worth the money to do it, I'd send the
grobet frame back. And are you sure you need two frames anyway? Unless you're
sawing to the center of larger pieces of metal, a 2.5 or 3 inch frame might be
all you ever need. If you do more, just get used to the 4 inch. Not quite as
delicate to use, but will work, if you're trying to watch your budget.
Remember, if you're cutting longer strips off the side of a sheet, you can grip
a blade with pliers right next to each end where it's clamped, and twist it (the
toothless ends of the blades are softer), so then the blade cuts somewhat
sideways, allowing you to cut long strips off the side of a sheet with the frame
off to the side, rather than inline with the cut.

There are sawblades, and then there are sawblades. Some very wide variations in
price. Some of the costliest are not really the best for beginners, since
they're often tempered to a harder state, making them better for harder metals,
or tough to cut metals like platinum, or steel. But for most beginners, a
medium quality level blade is just fine, and saves money, since you'll actually
break fewer of them. But I've not looked at the frei web site to be sure what
you got. So maybe you're fine....

Pliers too, come in a wide range of qualities. You can spend 30 or 40 dollars
per pair, or you can spend 5 dollars per pair. While the costly ones are often
indeed very nice and will last decades, you often don't need quite that quality.
it's amazing how much work you can do with the cheap stainless pakistani pliers
for a couple bucks each. My favorite are in general the standard german pliers,
which generally are NOT polished. If you shop around, you can get them for
under 15 dollars each, and sometimes, the smaller ones as cheap as about 8
bucks. (Tevel, at Allcraft, in New York, always seems to have specials on some
cool pliers at amazing prices, at every SNAG convention...) You can even find
servicable cheaper pliers at places like Harbor Freight. They'll be lap joint,
not box joint, which won't last as long and are a bit less precise for very fine
detailed work, but if you need you can spend a bit of time cleaning up the jaws
a bit more and end up with nicely workable tools for a couple bucks each.
However, I'll agree with you that using nice pliers is nicer. Really cheap ones
don't work as well, at least when you buy them. If you learn to modify them and
clean them up, many can be made much better. But starting with a good tight box
joint plier that's well made to start, is not a bad choice at all.

The above modificatnion advice applies less or at least differently to cutters
and nippers, though. Pliers can have somewhat softer steel in the jaws and
still be fine. It's handy at times, in fact, to be able to modify a plier jaw
slightly for a task at hand, an argument in favor of having a small supply on
hand of the really cheap pliers, for those jobs where you need to customize a
plier jaw and don't want to ruin an expensive pair of lindstroms. but cutters
need good steel, tempered correctly, to work at all well. There are many decent
ones though, even at your local hardware store. As with the pliers, you can
dress up the jaws to improve their accuracy if you need. Many of my precise
flush cutting nippers tarted life as plain styles, which I ground down and
trimmed a bit to make the cutting jaws more to my liking. Doing that is easy,
and can save you half the cost of the tool.

Good files are a joy, and make a big difference in what you can do with them, IF
you know how to file well. Almost any german or swiss made file will be fine,
though, and I've seen some surprisingly good files for ridiculously low prices
from Poland and elsewhere in eastern europe. The chinese made files are OK only
in the coarse machinist styles for larger work, but certainly are cheap.

Drill bits sold via jewelers supply houses are often a bit costly. Check harbor
freight's prices, or the prices at machine tools suppliers like Enco or MSC.
there's a set on sale now at Harbor Freight for a numbered set, size 1 to 60,
for under thirty dollars, I think. Decent drills. And I've found a few sellers
on ebay now and then selling small jewelers sized drills by the dozen for very
cheap. Chinese or russian made. Not sure which. They seem to work just fine
so far, though with the smallest sizes (half millimeter) I break a few more of
them than I would with better quality. But like I said, they were VERY cheap.
Learn to resharpen small bits. Not hard to do, with care. Small bits get dull
quickly, and when dull don't work as well and break easily. You'll get a lot
more life out of your bits if you learn to sharpen them. Needs a good
magnifier, and use a fine grit seperating disk in a flex shaft to sharpen them.
Wiorks well and easily.

Get the Rio Grand Catalogs. You will find their prices generally good, often
lower than Otto Frei. And check out www.contenti.com. Another good company.
not quite as wide a range of tools as Frie, but often very good prices. Another
link to know is www.gesswein.com Extremely wide range of products. Prices
probably comparible to Otto Frei, not usually lower. Note that for their web
site, you MUST use internet explorer. Their menu system doesn't work with the
firefox browser. And finally, keep www.Ishor.com in your links too. One of
the oldest and largest tools dealers, they've not catered as much to artists and
hobbyists, but those in the business know them. They carry a very wide range of
stuff, and if you spend some time digging through their site, there's an amazing
amount of info there (like, for example, full detailed instructions on gold and
silver refining. The best description I've found on the web. But it'll take
you some digging to find it.) Their web site, though extensive, is truely a
web. Somewhat tangled, and not as easy to navigate, and they don't have a good
online ordering system. But worth knowing about anyway. Once you find what you
want there, order via the old fashioned way, by phone. And like I said, don't
forget www.harborfreight.com for occasional really good buys on cheap chinese
tools.

Hope that helps.

Peter