I'm not a formally trained jeweller, but I am living off my my income as one and I'm having a not so little problem at the moment and I was wondering if you could help. I'm running out of ideas myself!

A lot of the pieces I make are a hammered texture (I've attached an example pic) and I have been making them for about two years, since November I have been having reoccurring scratching on the pieces when I make them, 80% of the time they are too scratched to sell, which made Christmas a nightmare! Originally I thought it was a scratched hammer and ordered new ones; several new ones many of which were visibly scratched when they arrived with me, but over the last few months I have ordered about 20 hammers so I don't think it can be the hammers anymore as I never had a problem with them before and I have tried 4 companies.

My process is to cut out the piece drill holes etc, sand it, rinsing off between each grit, up to 2000 grade, then anneal and rinse, hammer, anneal, hammer, anneal until the piece is textured, solder jump ring, pickle and then polish using my barrel. Am I missing something really really basic? I don't think I've changed any of my process! Many of the scratches are curved and they are quite difficult to see. I don't know whats happening since before this I only ever had a problem once replaced the hammer and everything was sorted! I was originally using repousse hammers now have also tried plainishing and blocking hammers.

Any help is much much appreciated! Click image for larger version.  Name: DSCF3186.jpg  Views: 50  Size: 58.6 KB  ID: 4347