Close Rings Seamlessly
The instruction manuals in our Beginning Weave Kits all include an expanded version of this tutorial on opening and closing rings seamlessly because it's a chainmaker's most essential skill.
Avoid Marring Rings
Unfortunately, the death grip stage is just part of learning to make chain. It's partially caused by awkwardness with new tools and unfamiliar motions and it's partially caused by the hands not yet being strong enough to be gentle. Making chain strengthens your hands and the stronger your hands are, the easier it is...
Use the Ring Tool
You've seen rings opened and closed using two pairs of pliers. Some people prefer to use one pair of pliers and a ring opener or jumpring tool, especially for opening a number of rings at once. The ring opener fits over the forefinger...
Tumble Polish Jewelry
We highly recommend the use of a rock tumbler and stainless steel shot for cleaning and polishing jewelry. We favor that method so much that most of this page and all the photos are devoted to explaining in detail exactly how to do it, despite the fact that we don't sell tumblers or any supplies for them...
Polish Jewelry, Other Methods
If you've ever polished the family silver, you've had your introduction to cleaning sterling by means of chemical compounds. There are sprays and dips intended for use on jewelry, as well, but because we prefer to keep our chemical use to a minimum...
Clean & Polish Copper
A mixture of lemon juice and salt or white vinegar and salt is a very effective solution for cleaning copper. You might have seen half a lemon salted and used to scrub copper bottom pots. For jewelry, dissolve a tablespoon of salt in a cup of lemon juice or vinegar...
