Piercing

[Goldsmith]

I found a folder, dated 1986, with some of my old butterfly drawings that I drew for marking out the wing piercings. The second picture is a photocopy of some butterflies pierced and drilled for stone setting after being plique a-jour enamelled.



James

[Ralph G]

Using paper glued templates for saw piercing is not ideal but it can be made to work. The biggest problem with using paper is that it tends to "fuzz" when you saw it and esp on very thin sections the regular craft glue tends to come off sometimes. A neat trick I use is to glue it down with thin cyanoacrylate glue (the very thin variant, almost as liquid as water) I spread out some superglue on the metal and then lay on the paper from the top. because of the thinness of the glue it will soak completely into the paper and will lock down all the fibers - unless all other glueing methods I tried. This way you can make a clean cut and the cut line will look as sharp as if I made it on pattern directly transferred to metal.
To remove the paper put it into jar with some acetone. takes 2-3h to dissolve the glue. If you are in a hurry you can remove the paper & glue by just heating it gently with a torch until the paper burns off - this might sound messy and prone to extensive cleanup afterwards but surprisingly will leave only very minimal residues and the metal will be fairly clean afterwards.

Alternately you can use the "cold toner transfer" (just do a search on youtube) to transfer patterns to metal.

I still mostly use the superglue method - this is quick and works very well for me.

[Aurarius]

Using paper glued templates for saw piercing is not ideal but it can be made to work. The biggest problem with using paper is that it tends to "fuzz" when you saw it and esp on very thin sections the regular craft glue tends to come off sometimes. A neat trick I use is to glue it down with thin cyanoacrylate glue (the very thin variant, almost as liquid as water) I spread out some superglue on the metal and then lay on the paper from the top. because of the thinness of the glue it will soak completely into the paper and will lock down all the fibers - unless all other glueing methods I tried. This way you can make a clean cut and the cut line will look as sharp as if I made it on pattern directly transferred to metal.
To remove the paper put it into jar with some acetone. takes 2-3h to dissolve the glue. If you are in a hurry you can remove the paper & glue by just heating it gently with a torch until the paper burns off - this might sound messy and prone to extensive cleanup afterwards but surprisingly will leave only very minimal residues and the metal will be fairly clean afterwards.

Alternately you can use the "cold toner transfer" (just do a search on youtube) to transfer patterns to metal.

I still mostly use the superglue method - this is quick and works very well for me.

I've successfully used self-adhesive "label" paper designed for computer printing. It sticks very well indeed to clean and smooth silver sheet even when you've sawn so much metal away that there is very little of the paper left stuck to the metal. Just remember to peel off any protective film on the metal before you stick the label to it, otherwise your design will begin to part company from the metal when it is very inconvenient for it to do so.

[Sandra]

I've successfully used self-adhesive "label" paper designed for computer printing. It sticks very well indeed to clean and smooth silver sheet even when you've sawn so much metal away that there is very little of the paper left stuck to the metal. Just remember to peel off any protective film on the metal before you stick the label to it, otherwise your design will begin to part company from the metal when it is very inconvenient for it to do so.

Ah thanks, I never thought to use self-adhesive paper. May just give that a try next time around.