Help with Buffing.

On Sun, 07 Oct 2007 02:31:01 -0700, "Peter W.. Rowe,"
wrotd:

By the way, do be careful with buffing watches. If you don't have some decent
level of knowledge about watches, you can do a lot of damage both to the watch
and to it's value with indiscriminate buffing. In particular, in many cases,
the watch movement should be removed before the case is buffed up

Peter

I cannot say "thank you enough" for this great help. I am in fact a
watch hobbyist. I have repaired quite a number of watches
(particularly pocket watches) that I want to go beyond just making
them tick. I want to learn to beautify them a bit, just for the
satisfaction. Buffing the cases is the start.

Almost all of the most serious accidents I've seen in the
jewelry business have involved buffing and polishing. That means danger to both
the jewelry, and to the person doing the work. In particular, pay attention to
how you hold the piece, so if the buff grabs it, it can be pulled out of your
fingers without taking the fingers along for the ride.

This is why I did not buy the 1/2 hp bench machine. The case of the
watch has ,usually, 4 lugs for installing the straps . They can easily
be grabbed by the wheels. If I remove the crystal as well(which I
should), the rim of the bezel provides another grip. So you end up
with very few angles at which to buff safely. I will need to figure
out the geometry of presenting the watch case safely to the buffing
wheel.

Since the flex shaft cannot do a proper job, I guess I will have to
get the big machine. This will be after I have learned to use the
compound and wheels with my stainless steel tablespoon as guinea pig.


sure. And for Abrasha and me both, what did you say yer name was? Even just a
first name would seem more polite...


Happily. My name is Ki-man Wong, in Hong Kong.

ABC

(Remove the first and the last letters)

ABC wrote:
On Sat, 06 Oct 2007 23:16:04 -0700, Abrasha
wrotd:

BTW, I will not reply to this thread again. I do not like people using
false names like . I find it rude.

May be you are luckly enough not to have had you real email address
spammed by disclosing it in a NG. I was unlucky once and that was
quite enough.

What you are doing is extremely common and _accepted_ on usenet,
and you are doing absolutely nothing wrong. Only in very clear
cases where trolling is the intent it it a problem.
(chuckle I suppose it would be _completely_ paranoid to think
that ABC could be an Ab eliciting a recursive flame from himself?)


As to Peter's recommendation to have some place to reply to by email,
it might be useful to you, but it is no skin off my nose.
I can, however, see how it might be useful to a moderator
to have a reply address. If you're not interested in receiving emails,
that is your business. (BTW, asking for replies by email is considered
rude in many groups, since it can on occasion subvert the usefulness
of the group as an _open_ forum.)

A very mysterious handle you have there.
I don't suppose you are a fan of Agatha Christie's novel,
the ABC Murders?

--
mbstevens
http://www.mbstevens.com

In rec.crafts.jewelry almost on Sun, 07 Oct 2007 02:04:44 -0700 a
smoke signal from "Peter W.. Rowe,"
rang out, which was heard to say :

On Sun, 07 Oct 2007 01:57:14 -0700, in rec.crafts.jewelry ABC
wrote:

On Sat, 06 Oct 2007 23:16:04 -0700, Abrasha
wrotd:

BTW, I will not reply to this thread again. I do not like people using
false names like . I find it rude.

Dear Abrasha

May be you are luckly enough not to have had you real email address
spammed by disclosing it in a NG. I was unlucky once and that was
quite enough.

Thanks for your very special way of helping. It has been informative.

ABC

While Abrasha may be a bit more blunt about his feelings regarding hidden email
addresses, he's often not the only one who'd appreciate some means of contacting
a poster in private email, or at least having what appears to be an honest and
real name to call a still anonymous poster. There are several ways to avoid
spamming as a result of newsgroup postings. In the vast majority of cases,
these problems are not caused by people individually reading the posts. Rather,
it's by automated bot programs scanning newsgroups (many at a time) to harvest
addresses, usually just from the "from" or "reply to" headers. A time honored
and reasonably effective way to get around this threat is to munge up your real
address is some manner, so those two headers are not correct, but then to give,
in the body of your message, a description of how to "unmunge" the address
should a human like to contact you. Scanning other posts in this group over
time you'll see many such munged email addresses, where the word "NOT" is
obviously added to the domain name, or "REMOVE" is insterted somewhere. Often
these are obvious edits for a human, but will fool a bot. Other changes are
more subtle, requiring an edit to the address which is then described in the
post, often in the sig file. Easy to do, and has the advantage that some people
may not wish to reply to an information request in the newsgroup, but would
prefer to reply in private. So making it somehow possible for people to reply
to you will often improve the quantity and quality of information you get.

Peter Rowe
moderator
rec.crafts.jewelry

I would add a couple things as well.
Yahoo, Gmail and others make throw-away addresses.
I've had this one for years.
(Although my real name ain't Frosty...)
As to polishing, what them guys said & this: Find some "bobbing
compound" it's soft and dirty and cuts really fast.
I use it to polish platinum, steel, and also gold and silver.
You can go from 320 grit sandpaper to bobbing compound to FabuLustre
(and rouge if you like) on steel!
I personally, when polishing gold, silver, platinum, use 320
sandpaper, then 1500 sandpaper, then Fabulustre (except with platinum
and I use that orange crap instead.

ABC wrote:
On Sun, 07 Oct 2007 02:31:01 -0700, "Peter W.. Rowe,"
wrotd:

By the way, do be careful with buffing watches. If you don't have some decent
level of knowledge about watches, you can do a lot of damage both to the watch
and to it's value with indiscriminate buffing. In particular, in many cases,
the watch movement should be removed before the case is buffed up

Peter

I cannot say "thank you enough" for this great help. I am in fact a
watch hobbyist. I have repaired quite a number of watches
(particularly pocket watches) that I want to go beyond just making
them tick. I want to learn to beautify them a bit, just for the
satisfaction. Buffing the cases is the start.

Almost all of the most serious accidents I've seen in the
jewelry business have involved buffing and polishing. That means danger to both
the jewelry, and to the person doing the work. In particular, pay attention to
how you hold the piece, so if the buff grabs it, it can be pulled out of your
fingers without taking the fingers along for the ride.

This is why I did not buy the 1/2 hp bench machine. The case of the
watch has ,usually, 4 lugs for installing the straps . They can easily
be grabbed by the wheels. If I remove the crystal as well(which I
should), the rim of the bezel provides another grip. So you end up
with very few angles at which to buff safely. I will need to figure
out the geometry of presenting the watch case safely to the buffing
wheel.

Since the flex shaft cannot do a proper job, I guess I will have to
get the big machine. This will be after I have learned to use the
compound and wheels with my stainless steel tablespoon as guinea pig.

sure. And for Abrasha and me both, what did you say yer name was? Even just a
first name would seem more polite...


Happily. My name is Ki-man Wong, in Hong Kong.

ABC

(Remove the first and the last letters)

Thank you, that's a lot better.

--
Abrasha
http://www.abrasha.com

ABC wrote:
On Sat, 06 Oct 2007 23:16:04 -0700, Abrasha
wrotd:

BTW, I will not reply to this thread again. I do not like people using
false names like . I find it rude.

Dear Abrasha

May be you are luckly enough not to have had you real email address
spammed by disclosing it in a NG. I was unlucky once and that was
quite enough.

Actually, I have. As you might have noticed, i also have my email
address on my website as a real email link. A prime way for spam bots
to find email addresses. And also a good way, for potential clients to
email me directly without having to copy and paste (or worse, use an
image file as a pinter to a real email address.) I just mailed a ring
to a client in England.

I have a decent spam, filter, both on my email server as well as on my
email client. Spam is not a big deal, once you know how to deal with it.

--
Abrasha
http://www.abrasha.com

ABC wrote:


I cannot say "thank you enough" for this great help. I am in fact a
watch hobbyist. I have repaired quite a number of watches
(particularly pocket watches) that I want to go beyond just making
them tick. I want to learn to beautify them a bit, just for the
satisfaction. Buffing the cases is the start.


I suggest to take a close look at this website.
http://www.unitedwatchservices.com/index.html

He is my next door neighbor in the building where I have my workshop in
downtown San Francisco. (check his address)

Click on "Services Process"
Scroll down to "Step 3". Click on the first photo.
That's a Baldor, 2 speed polishing lathe, with a 6" muslin buff. Notice
the concentric rings of stitching on the buff, which I mentioned in an
earlier post. As the buff wears down, you remove a new row of
stitching. The "free" length of the buff never gets longer than about
an inch to an inch and a half.

Also check the before and after pictures at the bottom of the page.

This is a (bad) picture of my motor:
http://www.abrasha.com/process/pbb/pbb-37.htm

I am polishing stainless steel in the photo. Even though it is not very
visible, this a a double spindle, single speed (1725 rpm) Dayton motor,
with a capacitor start. I have had this motor for 28 years. It has
never been serviced.

BTW, never use the same compound for stainless steel and precious
metals. If you do, you either won't have much gold (or silver) left, or
you'll never get a polish on your stainless.


This is why I did not buy the 1/2 hp bench machine. The case of the
watch has ,usually, 4 lugs for installing the straps . They can easily
be grabbed by the wheels.

Only, if you don't know how to buff a watch case, and/or properly hold
it, i.e. don't know what you are doing.

If I remove the crystal as well(which I
should), the rim of the bezel provides another grip. So you end up
with very few angles at which to buff safely.

Not true. You just have to hold it carefully, and not press it too hard
against the buffing wheel. And of course use the correct compounds for
the job. Which is different for each material to be buffed.

I will need to figure
out the geometry of presenting the watch case safely to the buffing
wheel.

Since the flex shaft cannot do a proper job, I guess I will have to
get the big machine. This will be after I have learned to use the
compound and wheels with my stainless steel tablespoon as guinea pig.

Since you are a watch hobbyist, I would suggest getting a handful of
crappy, old, damaged watches with stainless steel cases and practice on
those. This will give you a much better learning curve than spoons.

--
Abrasha
http://www.abrasha.com

On Sun, 07 Oct 2007 10:14:49 -0700, mbstevens
wrotd:

What you are doing is extremely common and _accepted_ on usenet,
and you are doing absolutely nothing wrong.

This is exactly what I thought, until I came here....

I can, however, see how it might be useful to a moderator
to have a reply address.

I never realized that NGs have moderators. None of the other NGs I
have been to appeared to have any control fo what people are posting.
May be this explains why my postings here appears only after a time
lag.

ABC

On Sun, 07 Oct 2007 21:23:08 -0700, in rec.crafts.jewelry ABC
wrote:


I never realized that NGs have moderators. None of the other NGs I
have been to appeared to have any control fo what people are posting.
May be this explains why my postings here appears only after a time
lag.

ABC

Most newsgroups are not moderated. Of the many tens of thousands of newsgroups
in usenet, only something less than 500 of them are moderated. Newsgroups have
to be specifically created as moderated groups, in which case it's common but
not required to have the word "moderated" or some other clue in the group name.
A few, like rec.crafts.jewelry were originally created as unmoderated groups,
and later converted when users voted to do that. In the case of this group, it
was a seemingly ever increasing flood of advertising, including some
particularly persistant gem dealers who'd post virtually their entire catalogs
to the group every few days. This was in 1997, back when most people still used
dial up connections, and the limited bandwidth made those frequent large posts,
and just the flood of ads, very annoying to users who just wanted to discuss
the craft of jewelry, as the group had intended. It's changed, and become much
less a problem since, due to the growth of the web and other more effective
advertising venues, but the group remains moderated, in part because I haven't
figured out a reasonable way to change it back, and in part because readers
still seem to appreciate my modest efforts to keep the group sane and on track.

The posting time delay you note is indeed because of the groups moderated
status. Messages you send to the group go to my email, and sit there waiting
for the next time I process new messages and post them to the group. I usually
do that a couple times a day, but occasionally, posts will wait longer for one
or another reasons. Like when I go on vacation or otherwise can't access the
net...

cheers

Peter Rowe
moderator
rec.crafts.jewelry

Seattle, where the weather is clearly switching to winter (rainy) mode...

On Sun, 07 Oct 2007 21:23:01 -0700, Abrasha
wrotd:

BTW, never use the same compound for stainless steel and precious
metals. If you do, you either won't have much gold (or silver) left, or
you'll never get a polish on your stainless.

Then is this chart reliable?

http://www.hobbytool.com/jewelers-rouge.htm

ABC
K.M. Wong