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  #1  
Old May 10th 08, 07:00 AM posted to rec.crafts.jewelry
[email protected]
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Posts: 9
Default Help!

Hi,
I bought a ring stretcher from eBay and it came without any
instructions. I am a rank novice as it is, and I can't figure this
out. (We didn't do this in the jewelry-making class I took in '91)
If anyone would be so kind and generous with his/her time as to take
a look at the page and tell me how to use this (you can't dumb it down
too much) I would be eternally grateful.

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll...=STRK:MEAFB:IT

TIA,
Judith
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  #2  
Old May 10th 08, 05:04 PM posted to rec.crafts.jewelry
lemel_man
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Posts: 22
Default Help!

wrote:
Hi,
I bought a ring stretcher from eBay and it came without any
instructions. I am a rank novice as it is, and I can't figure this
out. (We didn't do this in the jewelry-making class I took in '91)
If anyone would be so kind and generous with his/her time as to take
a look at the page and tell me how to use this (you can't dumb it down
too much) I would be eternally grateful.

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll...=STRK:MEAFB:IT

TIA,
Judith

First, you have to understand how it works.
Imagine you have a sausage of pastry dough on a table and you take a
rolling pin and roll the pastry lengthways. It gets thinner, flatter, a
little wider, but mostly it gets longer. Your ring stretcher does
exactly the same thing to the gold or silver sausage that is the shank
of the ring.
It has a number of small rollers: one is flat (the bottom one on your
machine) and fixed in the machine, and the others have different shaped
grooves in them and can be placed on the spigot above the fixed roller.
There are also two cog wheels: one is fixed with the fixed roller and
the other has a little pin in it that engages with a hole in the
removable roller you select to be used. The black knob on top of the
machine adjusts the gap between the two rollers.
You first select a roller that has a groove the same shape as the shank
of the ring you want to stretch, and fit it onto the top spigot, making
sure that the pin on the cog wheel engages with the hole in the roller.
You then unscrew the black knob until you can place the ring on the
bottom, fixed, roller, and then tighten it until the ring shank sits
snugly in the groove of the top roller. Carefully turn the side handle
and watch the ring rotate on the bottom roller. If the ring is not a
continuous band, be careful not to damage the shoulders or head of the
ring by contact with the top roller. That is the basic operation of the
machine. Tighten the top knob to squeeze the ring shank between the
rollers and turn the handle to roll the shank thinner.
Be very careful not to overdo the squeezing - its VERY easy to make the
ring too big. Squeeze a little, roll it, remove the ring and check the
size, keep repeating until its the correct size.
As the ring gets bigger, the shoulders and setting have to change shape
to match, and this can cause its own problems, so be observant and
careful so as not to cause damage. Some rings cannot be stretched in
this way, but most can. In some situations its sometimes necessary to
either not stretch at all, or to end up with a ring that is no longer
truly round so as to preserve the setting's shape. That is a decision
for you and the ring's owner.
I hope this helps.

--
Regards, Gary Wooding
(To reply by email, change feet to foot in my address)
 




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