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All That Gear For Just One Groove.
I rather took my ring stretcher at face value until I was taught these tricks on a course, using the powerful planisher which projects from the bottom of the column. It is intended for driving wedding ring shanks into the holes of the reducing plate and is surprisingly successful at that. Unfortunately it is wasted on me as I have never had the need to do it except as an experiment.
However if you lift out the reducing plate (I think of it as a carrousel) and substitute a doming plate, It will serve to close the ends of short pieces of tubing. The tubing is left un-annealed and short saw cuts (about six) are made in the end to be closed. It is then steadied with tweezers and the planisher brought down gently and steadily. For larger tubing the end to be closed can be weakened further by thinning it with a setting burr. The resulting bell shape can then be set with a stone to make a charm, as used for some of my necklaces.
Another use just requires a steel block for flattening small pieces of metal on. If for instance you are making a rectangular box for a box catch, or a setting for a stone, you will need to start with a right angle groove. It is far easier to score the metal sheet , first with a saw blade and then with needle files if the metal is first swaged, either in a swage block, or on a rubber bench block (eg Cookson 999 7151) using a wooden dowel. My example shows it in brass, which is particularly hard to score.
The scored metal is then annealed, flattened and bent into a right angle for soldering. If you have planned it well the angle metal can now be cut up to make the components for boxes (or even a tapered collet, but that’s another story). My last picture shows a lot of gear for making just one groove. Dennis.
