What is your favorite & least favorite part of metal smithing?

Admin and pricing dilemmas not included, Which little bits do you really look forward to? Is it the designing or flash of inspiration maybe? The very first cut or snip of a new project? piercing? soldering? or what about the final finishing touches? And on the other end of the spectrum what makes you quake and shudder or just generally sigh aloud?

For me i do love to pierce if i can take time and try to get it flowing nicely and as a fashion graduate i adore sketching out ideas. But my brazing torch send shivers up my spine (though i hope with practice it will get less scary) and i would say sanding through the grades can be tedious but there's that silver lining of watching the shine slowly appear (fiddly crevices are still a pain in the proverbial Grrrr!)

What floats your boat and grinds your gears guys?
Tasha
X

Design and polishing.

Everything in between is a nightmare.

The best part is getting an invoice paid on time and in full. And I also like piercing and shaping metals.

James

Having spent most of the day making a simple hinged piece, I'd say hinges are my most hated thing. I like design but hate polishing. When hinges aren't involved, I love soldering as I'm a bit of a pyromaniac.

Like Carole, hate polishing, so I spend a lot of time avoiding it. Radial discs are my best friends ;)

Love designing. Love soldering. Quite like hinges. HATE box clasps (well I do today anyway...)

radial discs are in my wish list!
X

I hate filing and soon reach for my rotary tools.

I hate hammering, so I'm not much of a smith and I use my ring stretcher, ring bender and my hydraulic press whenever I can.

I like having all the components made and then assembling them for the finished piece.

But most of all I enjoy seeing the effect of someone wearing it. Dennis.

I'm with Dennis on a positive reaction from the customer, its a great feeling ,the thing that I find most tiresome is the repetition and heating of fingers when polishing I think.

I'm massively into fusing right now so that gives big highs when something good emerges and lows when it either doesn't fuse or goes brittle or I over heat it and there's just a blob. Polishing is tedious but less so since tumble polishing came in. It certainly seems less of a chore than when I started smithing many years ago...I probably work a lot cleaner too now.
I really don't like it when a pearl cracks when I am drilling it (although that is not smithing I know)

I love design and getting to the part where all the components are put together, because I can visualize what the finished item will look like, then comes the tedious part of getting all the marks out and sanding/polishing which I hate. The nicest moment is when I have eventually finished the item and look at it and think yes I made that.