Island of Misfit Tools

Metalsmiths need lots of tools.  Many of the tools are obvious -- blowtorch, files -- but the longer you're a metalsmith, the more you start misappropriating tools.  You find tools that really are for other purposes but fit what you need exactly.  For example, a goldsmith acquaintance of mine is a dentist.  She recently spent an hour showing some fellow metalsmiths tools that she's ordered from her dental catalogs for metalsmithing purposes.  There are some fantastic things in those dental catalogs, and I'm not just talking about that gizmo that wrenches your mouth open.  I'm not thinking about getting that thing to use on my daughter.  Not at all.

Sanding pads, aka thin sanding sponges.

Here's my favorite misappropriated tool: the sanding pad.  It's actually for woodworkers.  It's to help them easily sand rounded items like table legs and artisan billy clubs.  But it also works beautifully on jewelry.  The thin sponge attached to the back of the sanding pad is so flexible and easy to hold, unlike sandpaper.  It's pretty good at getting into corners and smallish spaces.  Also unlike sandpaper, it's very durable.  You can even wash it clean of metal dust and use it again.

I decided to look up what made sanding pads so awesome, and it's the aluminum oxide abrasive blah blah snore.  I have to admit -- I don't really care what makes them so hardy and flexible.  It's kind of like Magic Eraser: I'm sure there's something in that thing that's going to give me brain cancer, but it gets unwashable marker off of walls!  Woot!  As long as it's working for me, I'm happy.

Here are some other members of my Island of Misfit Tools: 

My blowtorch: Just add a torch head and you're
in business.  It ain't graceful, but it
gets the job done.

1) My blowtorch.  Professional metalsmiths have these fancy torches with tanks that mix acetylene and oxygen, or little hand butane torches for detail work.  Me, I have a 14 oz. Worthington propane cylinder that you can waltz into any ol' hardware store and get.  Add an off-the-rack nozzle/torch head and you're in business for $19 instead of $600.

2) A wooden kitchen spoon.  If you want to make your own metal links and jump rings (those little metal circles that hold everything together), you can get jump ring makers to enable you to make uniform rings.  And I have several jump ring makers.  But the jump ring maker that creates my favorite size and shape is the handle of a wooden spoon I found.

3) A pushpin.  Just your average little pushpin (mine has a red plastic top, so I can see it easily if it falls on the floor).  I drill holes in metal a lot.  But it's hard to drill a hole without the drill skittering all over the metal.  When you're driving nails, that's what a nail punch is for -- to help position the nail before you start hammering.  But nail punches leave too big a mark for many tiny pieces of jewelry.  So I just use a pushpin, hammering lightly on its flat top to leave a tiny indentation in the metal.

I'll show more tools I use on here in the future.  Feel free to misappropriate anything I mention for your own needs!  For example: Wooden spoons are also great for beating children, decorative crafts, poking at dead things in your yard, and to help you fish things out from under the couch.  I understand some people also use them for cooking, but I have never actually seen this happen.