An Interesting Gem

A while back, a dealer with whom I wasn’t all that familiar showed up at the shop. As is the tradition, he showed me some of his miscellaneous diamonds to demonstrate the superiority of his grading and acquisition skills. All this is actually useless as a screening method because, of course, he will limit the demonstration to pieces that support his pitch. I’m all about real-life performance and, in subsequent contacts he proved to be somewhat unreliable, so I dumped him like a handful of warm poop.

He did, however, have a couple fancy-cut stones that caught my attention. Despite my misgivings, and contrary to my usual caution when dealing with peripatetic stone dealers, I fell in love with this .47ct. modified kite-shape stone. It is graded as VVS1-D, and I have found no reason to dispute that.

Measuring 6.75×4.25mm, it’s not a huge stone, but will show very well in a delicate ring setting or as the center piece  in a bold pendant. I love it

 

 

You make it look so easy.

Some years back, maybe too far back, my Josie and I found ourselves, much to our surprise, at a snooker tournament. My old buddy from North Battleford, Hal Grobman by name, was competing and, since it was taking place in the newly renovated Midtown Plaza, we thought we’d check it out.

Well, Hal didn’t do all that well in the tournament, which is a shame, but from my selfish perspective this was a good thing as he came up into the stands to sit with us and generously fill us in on the finer points of the game. Watching the game as a know-nothing, the play at this level seemed very straightforward as it seemed that all the shots were pretty much straight in. Fuck-all to that.

What I was missing was the fact that these people weren’t necessarily worried about the shot, because they were that good: The shot was going in. No question. What they were concerned with was where the cue ball was going to end up in relation to all the other balls, or at least the next ball in the strategy, and the one after that, and the one after that. In addition, they needed to worry about the result of an unlikely miss, and not leaving their opponent in an advantageous position for his next shot. This is the name of the game, after all. If no good shots present themselves, it is good strategy to ensure that the cue ball is left in a spot that has your opponent snookered.

Watching any professional, or anyone proficient at their craft, do what they do almost always leads to the observation that “it just looks so easy.” Watching my wife, ma petite authorette, typing anything is astonishing as the words flow smoothly across the screen without any apparent hesitation. Listening to her working on a manual typewriter was like an Uzi attack, but with bells. I get my share of admiration while teaching my craft, so I understand what has gone before to make it look easy.

This concept of preparing things so that the rest of the process is, or at least looks, easy, is the very basis of the way I try to do things in my profession. In any process, there is an optimal course of action that will lead smoothly to the ultimate goal, and the more experience one accumulates, the easier it gets. Each step may seem simple, but doing them in the correct order is crucial to a smooth transition from start to finish.

I have more to say on this subject, but it’s very nice out today, so I’m going to go mess around in the sun.

KP out.

Marcotte Sizing

About a million years ago, while attending the wedding of my best friend, I was introduced to a fellow goldsmith, Clarence Marcotte. At least, I thought we were fellow goldsmiths. He, contrariwise, started the relationship by telling me that I couldn’t be a goldsmith because my hands were too girly. We got past that disagreement fairly quickly and chatted the evening away.

I was invited to check out his shop the next day and, since I had no other obligations, I spent the afternoon siphoning off as much information from him as I could. He gave me some new insights into pavé setting, the mad world of electric welding, and some tips on polishing silver using kerosene and lampblack. Wear old clothes would be one, I suppose.

He was a delightful mix of old-school and  new tech, but for our purposes here, the best tip he gave me was about sizing rings. As discussed in my previous post on sizing, there are occasions when the standard method isn’t adequate, which involves a sort of dovetail fitting. Filing the parts to fit is fine, if you’re not in a particular hurry, but Clarence had taken the concept and turned it into a technique that, I think, could be extremely efficient if used consistently. Let me say at the outset, however, that I don’t do that much sizing, my schtick being custom design. I do use a dumbed-down method similar to his whenever I am sizing rings way up or am forced by circumstances to size some skinny-ass commercially-made lady’s ring.

What Clarence did was to use heavy end-cutters to clip the shanks. At its simplest, and the method I use most often, the shank is clipped as shown to remove the worn-out section. This leaves nicely squared-off ends that are perfectly prepared for  fitting a notched piece of sizing stock. With a bit of adjusting, the piece is firmly held in place and ready for soldering. This also corresponds with Bert’s (Bert is my primary old-guy) philosophy that the pieces should hold together by themselves before soldering. Take care that there is not too much tension on the joint, as nasty things can happen during soldering. (Don#t ask me how I know. Also, don#t ask me why, in some programs, all my apostrophes turn into number signs. I will try my best to avoid them.) The ring shown here was not only thin from wear, it had also been sized several times. Yikes. best to remove the whole area.

Clarence had made this a much more workable system modifying another set of end cutters into heavy-duty flush-cutters that clipped flat on one side, and with that cool squared-end on the other. By cutting a piece out of a ring (swapping ends on the cutter appropriately,)  the ring can be closed up and soldered just as in a normal sizing. Then the leftover piece is a pre-shaped bit of sizing stock for a a future up-size. All that has to be done in that case is to notch the inside of the cut ring to fit it in.

This method really only makes sense in the context of a full-time repair shop where an accumulation of a multitude of little sizing chunks is a good thing, but it is a handy way to get around the problem of those jobs where a full shank is not necessary, but the ring will be rendered weak by simply doing a regular sizing. As well, it is probably impractical when presented with a heavy shank but, then again, it#s probably not necessary. Stupid hash-tags.

The picture in my head that endures is of a set of end-cutters that looked  more-or-less like this, and of Clarence and his monster hands crushing through whatever weight of shank presented itself. So long, Clarence. And Thanks.

 

 

My So-called Book

The so-called  book started life as simply a way to collate my ideas on how things should be done. Or, at the very least, how I do them. It could be described as a training manual, of sorts, as I found myself telling the same stories repeatedly while instructing new apprentices, and it still makes me inordinately happy to see someone consult it while at work. I kept adding to it over the years, and even had some people, smarter than I, read it for me to determine its level of coherence. They were all very polite and became aware of the fact that there was precious little chance that I would change anything. I get quite attached to my words and am loath to mess with them. To these worthies I offer my apologies.

The main such reader, an actual editor, no less, is my beloved wife Joanne or, as she is known in writerly circles, J.C.Paulson. During an extended  period of professional and personal turmoil, she took it upon herself to begin writing an actual book; a novel, and a ripping good yarn at that. She pointed out that, if I ever intended to publish my little effort, it was imperative that I change some things about the book. She was right, so, of course, I never intended to publish at all. Besides, contemplating such a thing would also entail actually finishing the son-of-a-bitch, and there was little or no hope of that. I would just continue to add stuff to it until it collapsed in on itself like some dim neutron star.

As it was, though, she turned out to be the actual impetus in the eventual publishment of the book after all. Y’see, she had finished her novel and, in a move painfully familiar to me, stubbornly refused to admit that it was, indeed, done and perfect and ready to release. “Ship it!” I’d cry, quoting Seth Godin, whom trust in such matters, but to no avail. Since her intent was to publish it as an eBook on Amazon.ca as preparation for actual print publication, I figured I’d have a look at the site and get a feel for the process. Maybe help her along the way, good hubby that I am.

This led to me getting up early one winter Sunday (I think it was winter. Works better for the story in my mind), and logging on to the Amazon Kindle self-publishing site. In order to make the experiment more concrete, I required some sort of extended document to play with, and I had just such a beast in my own sort-of, kind-of book-thing. There were a few false starts but, within an hour or so, I had somewhat inadvertently made a eBook. Truth be told, I haven’t even looked at it since, as it was just an experiment. Perhaps I should have a gander.

In any case, the process got the better of me and, when once Jo had gotten her novel converted into an actual print-on-demand book, I determined to do the same, despite my misgivings. It wasn’t an easy process, due to the many illustrations and complete lack of thematic consistency, but eventually, there it was, for better or worse, an actual, palpable book-like thing. Buy early, buy often. Give some to your friends.

That’s my story.

Two Decades On

The most important person at K.M.Paulson Goldsmith Ltd. goes largely unappreciated by the general public, and often, regrettably, by K.M.Paulson. Without me, the company would not exist, but without my friend and partner, Joan Ander, it would no longer function. Joan’s not my wife, as has been assumed by many people over the years, but we do spend a lot of time together. (My actual wife, the other spar in my support system, is Joanne, which sometimes adds to the confusion.)

Twenty years ago (twenty years!), Joan gained her position at KMP by the age-old method of bugging the old guy. With an educational background in art, specifically ceramics and textiles, there didn’t seem to be a lot of crossover in skills, but she did show up with the attitude that sometimes matters most in this trade; tenacity. She kept to the difficult job of perfecting the product under the watchful eye of a demanding boss and an even more demanding public. As a specialist in pavé setting, she is arguably the best in the province and, trust me, she’s the only one who will argue. It’s a demanding process, and not to be confused with its bastard child, “Micro-Pavé”, a machine-based technique that is rapidly becoming the bane of the industry.

The next time you call or visit KMPLTD, the Joan that you speak to is someone worthy of your respect and knowledgeable in all aspects of the industry. Listen, ask questions, and pay attention, she knows her stuff.

Thanks for being here for twenty years, Joan, and here’s to twenty more.

Update: Customer helping.

As mentioned in my previous post, stretching a ring to size it up is problematic, and only to be attempted with plain bands. In my more mercenary moods, I’ve always thought that repair goldsmiths should, as a “service” to their retail store owners, supply them with their very own ring stretchers. A ring stretcher, as shown, consists of a split, expandable mandrel onto which the ring is placed, and a lever, which is yanked down to expand said mandrel, thereby stretching the ring. The problem is, if there is a weak spot in the ring, say a solder joint from a previous sizing, the stresses are concentrated on that point and the ring will snap. Or, as in this case, when stones are set into the band. This ring fared quite well in the process and didn’t actually break, but stretched, more or less evenly, at each of the holes containing gemstones. Had it broken at one point, early in the process, the repair would have been a simple solder to repair the crack. As it was, however, the ring stretched, and stretched, and stretched until it was a total write-off. All to save a couple of bucks.

Leave the goldsmithing to the goldsmiths.

 

Ring Sizing

Over the years, the question has come up surprisingly frequently, “So, how do you size a ring? Do you, like, stretch it or something?”

No, we usually don’t stretch them, although very occasionally will stretch a plain band up by a tiny amount. It is risky and makes the ring thinner, so we’d prefer not to (See the next episode http://kmpltd.ca/2018/03/29/update-customer-helping/).

No, what we do is, generally, cut the ring and either remove enough material to size it down, or add enough material to size it up. The length of material necessary to raise or lower the size is just over 2.5mm per, or the thickness of two dimes. When asked what we do with the gold that we cut out of down-sized rings, this number will help to reassure customers that we’re not making out like bandits on each sizing; most of the cost of sizing is in the labour. It takes time to do it right.

 

The simplest sizing is one where the ring is being sized down, is still in good shape, and the back of the shank hasn’t been thinned out by wear. The ring is cut and filed so that there will be no obvious seam, then closed up, maintaining the original, circular shape as much as possible. It is then soldered, cleaned up, and polished. Would that it was always that simple, but that’s the basic gist.

 

 

 

Sizing the ring up involves opening the ring to the correct size, ensuring, once again, that the basic shape is maintained. The opening is then filed so as to present two parallel sides, a piece of gold filed to fit, and the repair soldered and finished as before. The sides of the opening need to be parallel so that the new piece will be held in place while soldering, otherwise it pops out as it’s heated and burns a hole in your shirt. Don’t ask me how I know. I am, of course grossly over-simplifying the process, but I haven’t got all day.

 

 

Where the process gets complicated, is when the back of the shank (the ring part of the ring) is so thin that, to size it up in the normal manner would render it ridiculously thin. This can be du

e to wear, or built in to the structure of the ring by shabby manufacturing. If the latter, little can be done to improve it, but if it’s just the back bit of the ring, then extra material can be removed, out to where the shank is a bit thicker, then a more substantial piece of new gold can be soldered in. We try to send stuff out looking better than when it came in.

If there is so much wear that the ring is thin more than half-way around the shank, then a full shank replacement will be necessary, but that’s a story for another day.

Just a note about solder. When we talk about solder in the industry, we’re not speaking of lead solder, which is the most common type that people think of. Horrible stuff used on electronics and copper plumbing. Our solder is actually karat gold (10K, 14K, 18K) that has been alloyed in such a way as to lower its melting point. Properly used, it makes an invisible joint that is as strong as the original material.

Thus endeth the lesson. For more pedantic fuckery, stay tuned.

(I originally stuck this up on my old site, but figured that, as it is, or should be, of general interest to my customers or potential customers, it should be up here as well. It will also give me more practice in posting to this blog, which isn’t quite as intuitive as the old one. Story of my life.)

Photography

I’ve been making jewellery for, effectively speaking, about forty-five years. I sold my first pair of earrings when I was fifteen, so there have been a lot of pieces put out there. I know what they looked like, kind of, but there is no record of them anywhere. Or at least any record available to me. That bugs me.

When I started my own business in 1986, I began taking photos of everything I put together so that I could keep track of my accomplishments, for better or worse. At first, I used an old Nikon SLR that I cadged from my wife. She had purchased it for her year at journalism school and it was just sitting there. I added a macro lens to it and it served me well for the next twenty years or so. The process of snapping a dozen pictures at a time and having to wait a week or more to find out whether they had worked honed my skills as a bonehead photographer, as I seldom got a second chance. Filing the photos away into a series of crudely organized albums provided the basis for my future database project.

When I finally got my head around the concept of computers, the database started to develop, but it wasn’t until the advent of digital photography that things really achieved some efficiency. Until then, I was still snapping analog photos, waiting for processing, then scanning them into the computer. Oh, and I still used the photo albums for organization and display, so I was just adding another layer of work. Add to this the books of contact sheets, listed by approximate date, and you have quite a lot of extra time spent on archiving and organizing photos.

The convenience of digital photography provided a great deal more flexibility in the process and, not incidentally, an increase in the actual number of pictures taken. By this time, they numbered well into the thousands so the database was pretty much a necessity. It provides the basis for the IdeaShopper that exists online, but that’s another story entirely.

During this time, the pictures were generally taken under a certain amount of duress, as I’m always running somewhat behind. I’d finish the piece, snap the photo of it, and the customer would come and pick it up. The artistic quality of each shot was secondary to its value as a record of work done. To this end, the photos have a starkness to them that, I hope, provides me with enough detail that I could duplicate the piece should a bad thing happen. I refer to them as autopsy photos.

Over the years, I have had some professional shots taken of my pieces, but this is a rare occurrence and inconvenient in the extreme, what with my propensity for running late. That being said, I was impressed by the incredible difference between my rudimentary work and that of a pro. My most recent apprentice, Chris Sifford, is a pro and took some stunning shots of a few of our pieces. Chris has since moved on to other, more lucrative pursuits, but I still appreciate the life he brought to my work.

Copyrights

A small contretemps recently brought to my attention the subject of copyright, and my complete ignorance of the subject.

I say ignorance because, while I do know a lot about the concepts and rules pertaining to protection of intellectual property, I don’t pay much attention to them. Now this would imply that I’m a big stealer of Ideas, and that would be true. Sort of. More to the point, I don’t worry about my ideas being out there for any and all to see, because such a huge part of what I do is process. Start with a little concept and make it into a thing. It’s what I do, and anyone who wants to take one of my little concepts and run with it is more than welcome to do so. It is my contention that the finished product will not resemble, in more than a passing way, the product I would put together. Vision and technique are as individual as people.

Now, back to being a big, fat, stealer.

I have been praised, upon occasion, for my design prowess, and will accept such praise gladly, but I can’t help feeling like a bit of a sham. I don’t design this stuff, I just pay attention to the wants and/or needs of my customers. If they come in with a picture of another designer’s jewellery and want something just like it, well, they can’t have it, any more than I can duplicate one of my own pieces. Everything is run through the filter of their concept, my technique, and the way these come together. Add to this the inevitable differences arising from budget, physical size, and practicality, and you perforce end up with a unique piece.

People notice my stuff and can recognize it as mine if they’ve paid attention, and that’s the way I want it. It’s got a style that is uniquely mine but puts into three dimensions my customer’s unique vision.

Sweatshop

One of the problems with working in a goldsmith shop as opposed to some fancy-ass retail store is that the bigger picture becomes obscured by the job at hand. I have an uncanny ability to focus on the small picture (Whoever said “Don’t sweat the small stuff” wasn’t a goldsmith) leaves me somewhat unprepared for the world around me.

As I work away in a building with an air conditioning system that is unpredictable, at best, and currently completely non-functional, I don’t really worry about the fact that perspiration is making it difficult to hold onto my tools. I just grip more tightly. It has always been a characteristic of the places I’ve worked (or owned) that the most important thing is the quality of the piece being made at that moment, and my surroundings shouldn’t make any difference. Suck it up.

I begin to recognize the true extent of the discomfort when a civilian shows up. My customers seem to accept the heat without complaint, although after climbing several flights of stairs, they could be forgiven for kvetching some. Not only is my shop on the actual third floor of the building rather than the second, as would be understood from the address, but each flight of stairs is ungodly high, given the fourteen-foot ceilings we are blessed with. I’ve considered obtaining one of those emergency kits with the cardiac paddles, just in case.

So, to my customers, thank you for your patience and forbearance. The cooling system is, so they claim, up and running again and the building should be comfortable by the time the weather cools down. You’ll be able to hang beef in here. Bring a sweater.