This weeks newsletter from Helen Driggs on Beading Daily gives excellent instructions for how to use your first jewelry saw.
She has hit the nail right on the head with this one. The jewelry saw is really the most important tool if you are doing any metal work and using it is simultaneously simple and quite hard. Practice is the key. It is easy to learn to make cuts, but take time to really look at your lines. Are your cuts straight verticals or do they meet your guideline at the top of the metal and seem to stray away to the left or right at the bottom? Mine always did at first.
Follow Helen’s instructions and you will be well on your way to mastering this. I can’t stress a few things enough:
– Keep a light touch, no pushing into the metal with the blade, just an easy up and down motion
– Blades break all the time, just buy them in big quantities and realize that at least for the start you will break lots.
-Keep you blade completely vertical all the time to aid in getting straight lines.
– And use something to lubricate the blade – I just keep a chunk of beeswax nearby and run my blade through it every once in a while
Have fun!
