BenchNews

Benchnews made it onto the Makezine blog today! I want to thank my roomate Sirshannon for suggesting my site. It only took me 3 months to realize that they were intrested…lol Please take the time to check out my company site too, over at LALdesigns. Thanks MAKE!

All the excitement of closing on my very first dwelling thru me for a loop and certainly off track. I feel I have some new drive now! Leading up to the Xmas season there are some intresting projects in my path, and I plan on taking them on in methodical fashion. One of the things that has held me back as far as posting to this site and my business site is the utter lack of photo evidence of my work; that stops imediately. For the last week I have been putting as much effort into documenting what I do as doing it. So keep an eye out for more of the tools I like to work with and possibly some animated tutorials coming soon!

I have desperately been needing a pen plater. I had previously purchase one of the disposible ones to try, and found it very lacking in effectiveness. So I finally pony-ed up the $115 to buy the Samson Economy plater from one of our favorite suppliers. I got the plater today and upon inspection noticed that all it is, is a “2 amp regulated dc power supply”. Guess what a google search of that term brings up….
THIS
Nice, huh! Now Im going to opt and get the nice pen and clamp as replacement parts from that very same supplier, but Im sure you could fashion them yourselves. Even with buying the nice attachments Im coming in about 50$ cheaper.
It still blows my mind when I think about companies putting a sticker on another companies product, doubling the price, and calling it there own. Go get your new pen plater now, hell, get 2, at $23 how can you go wrong.

So, i got kind of excited when I ran across THIS post on a major blogging site refering to our trade, or to be more specific, ring cutters. After reading through the article I was struck by the utter lack of any reference to the jewelry trade! You would think after reading it that the only option for removing a ring that you had “outgrown” would be to take a trip to the ER, resulting in 1) a ruined ring or, 2) a missing finger. The article intially caught my attention because I had just commented to a customer that I happened to be removing a ring from, that i have been doing this a lot lately. Which is indeed true, I have cut off more rings in the last 2 months than I have in my entire tenure in the business (does this say anything about the emerging epidemic in our country ;))? Probably not, most cases involved a pregnancy.
The point of my rebuttle though is to say that anybody who finds themselves in need of having a ring removed need look no further than their local jewelry store. I’m quite certain the store would happily remove it for free, but be considerate and leave the item in that store to be put back together in a manner that will enable you to wear it for years to come.
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I was just looking around the web this mourning, and this caught my eye. Not a good time to buy european gold coin I assume.
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For the lack there of, I have decided to start BenchNews. A Blog for Goldsmiths, Platinumsmiths, Silversmiths, or just the curious. Look back often and see whats new…