The Tip Made Me Buy It

Metals mith Society is a community on Instagram that has over 240,000 individuals , from professional jewelers to small business artisans , hobbyists , students and even those curious , lucky lose eager to learn about jewelry making . Together we share tips , kindness and support .

In this podcast , I will discuss tips from the Instagram page , provide deeper insights , address questions and share bonus tips that often surface in the comments section . So , whether you've been making jewelry for a while or you're just starting your jewelry making journey , this podcast is your go-to resource for all the jewelry making tips .

So grab your tools , dust off your workbench and join me . In today's episode , I'm discussing some of the product recommendations made by our community that I purchased as soon as they sent me the tip .

Like before I even shared the tip , I'd already bought them Everything from a mini vacuum that collects your precious metal dust , wooden storage drawers for your stone hoard , an inexpensive solution to store your stamp collection and a tool that has gone viral in the jewelry space .

Before I get to today's jewelry making tips , I want to tell you about my Canvas lamp . It's my favorite tool to capture videos for social media hands down . I personally purchased two of them with my own money and I use them to shoot process videos , to share tips with our community and for my jewelry business to give customers a peek at my process .

I am so excited to have partnered with Canvas to give our podcast listeners and community members 10% off their order with Code SOCIETY 10 , and I will link that in my show notes .

The first community tip I'm sharing today is from Rusty Creek Designs and it's for the cutest mini vacuum . And in this tip , rusty Creek Designs uses this mini vacuum to collect silver dust from the bench area , from the drawer , from the top of the bench pin , from the top surface . And , like I said , I immediately bought one of these and it's fantastic .

I've used it to also clean up wax if I'm carving and there's wax dust everywhere , little wax particles and no joke . I also brought one into my kitchen and I have my six and eight year old use it to kind of clean up their crumbs sometimes .

This small vacuum measures about three inches by three inches , so it's small and it's sort of in the shape of a square that has rounded corners . There are options to use AA batteries , and some of them are rechargeable . So if you're interested in it and you go to the link , make sure you know what you're getting .

I have the one that's rechargeable , and so I can plug it in and give it some juice when I need to use it . It has bristles on the bottom , so it's not going to scratch any surfaces .

It's also used on keyboards and has a bunch of other applications around the office , but super easy to use , super easy to pull apart , and then you're left with your metal dust . In this instance , you can then pour it into your refining bin , and it makes all of that super easy . There was a fantastic comment with this post from Kiss the Moon Designs .

They use this little vacuum as well , and they use it to clean up a namel that spills in front of their kiln , and I think that's another fantastic idea .

One of the most commonly asked questions that was brought up by this tip is people that were asking about what to do with metal dust , and so that lets me know that there are a lot of members of our community that still aren't sure about how to refine , and so I do want to link you to my blog article all about refining metal , and I have multiple different

companies that you can send dirty bench sweeps to . In this instance , when you're using this little mini vacuum , anything that's inside is probably going to be considered dirty bench sweeps , because it's probably not going to be just pure metal dust , and so in that instance , you want to call one of these companies that takes dirty sweeps .

They will send you a refining bucket and this is where you would pour the contents of not only this little mini vacuum , but if you're also vacuuming the floor or sweeping the floor of your studio , which I'm sure we're all regularly doing , right , I will link the refining article in the show notes if you want to learn more about that . Alright . So

the next tip I want to talk about is pretty much infamous by now . It's the pastel wooden boxes shared by Dang Brave Girl back in 2019 . I feel like these boxes have been around with us for as long as Metal Smith Society has been a thing .

So these pastel wooden boxes are so perfect for storing cabochons and faceted stones because they have very shallow drawers , so you can fit a lot of drawers on a tabletop and you can put a ton of stones in them . And so , since Jamie from Dang Brave Girl shared this tip so generously very long ago .

There have been a multitude of ways that the community has built upon this tip over the years . People have painted their boxes , you know , just to make them look cool . In their studio They've been lined with felt , which isn't a bad idea because if you put a felt in the bottom you're less likely to have a stone scratch against the wood .

If you have some particularly delicate cabochons , we've had people remove the inside dividers in case you wanted to put larger stones or if you wanted to put your stones themselves onto cards with the information written .

You know how much the stone cost , what type of stone it is and you want a little bit more space to fit that in , you can remove the dividers . Some people add additional dividers as well . And then the other tip I love that was built upon this tip is to use a label maker to add labels to the outside .

So , for example , you could label that one drawer contains turquoise , or you could label that this drawer contains cabochons from this particular company or lapidary artist . I also use my drawers to hold some tubing and gallery wire , and so I also have that labeled in my studio .

I'm a huge fan of these drawers and super grateful to Dang Brave Girl for sharing them . I'll link them in the

show notes . This next tip is for those of us that have a large collection of stamps . So this was shared by AeroBwraps . You know I hope I'm saying that correctly I kind of really relate with those Peloton instructors that are trying to say people's username .

Sometimes you're just not sure where to put the emphasis , so I don't know if it's AeroBwraps or AeroBwraps , so I apologize about that . But your tip was brilliant . This was shared back in the day and they used an ammo box to store their stamps .

And when I tell you , I bought this ammo box and the stamps fit in there perfectly , I have my stamps facing up so I can see exactly what I have and what I need to grab . Alex also shared in this tip that they use silica bags . You know the ones that come when you buy a new pair of shoes or something like that .

Those are definitely a really good thing to save because you can put them in your bench drawers where you're keeping your tools files . You can keep them in your ammo box in this instance because those are going to help reduce rust . So definitely save those every time you come across them .

Elizabeth Space also shared using an ammo box , but she removed the lid and she stores other small hand tools as well , and I will link that tip as well if you want to see exactly how that looked and what tools she was storing in hers .

The last community tip I wanted to share today was one of the first tips to have gone viral back in 2018 . The year I started , Metals mith Society At Petercat Jewelry shared a tool she had discovered in a printmaking class a pipe deburring tool . So if you're not familiar , a pipe deburring tool is a small hand tool .

It's probably about seven inches long and it's got a plastic handle and the top has this little curved-looking metal piece that rotates , and what it's used for is to deburr pipes . So when pipes get a little sharp edge , this can get ran inside the interior and it'll remove that .

And so this tip is to create that rounded inside of a ring using this pipe deburring tool . And it's awesome because , holding your ring firmly and rotating this tool around the inside of a ring , it gets a nice clean cut and really removes the metal evenly in a way that creates less scratches than if you were gonna file it .

So since this tip has been shared , I feel that it's also become infamous , and lots of jewelers have been using the pipe deburring tool , so I'm so appreciative that this was shared and again , it's one of those tools . I bought it right away and I've now been using it for years and years . An easy way to find all these

tools is the Metals mith Society Amazon storefront . But before I get into that , I just want to mention that if you find any of these tools at a local small business , please do that .

I'm always all about supporting small business and since there are small businesses on Amazon , I always try when possible to link those businesses so that we can support them as well . Each purchase you make from the Amazon storefront does give back to the page a little bit , so I appreciate your support .

You will find the link to it in the show notes and you can also follow me on there and get updates when I create a new list . Currently I have lists for safety equipment , jewelry making books , shipping and packaging and more , so definitely be sure to check that out .

If you don't already own a copy , you can find my book Metals mith Society's Guide to Jewelry Making on Amazon as well , and if you have the book and you love it , please consider leaving me a review . It really helps others find the book . Thank you for joining me Till next time .