If you work in wire work and jewelry you may have felt the pain of tool marks
left on your projects by the tools you use, the metal tools leave dents and
dings that have to be polished out in order to get a professional clean finish.
Today I have for you a really cool product that may help you and I've come
up with several other ways of using it as well. Hey there, creative people,
Sandy here, welcome to another Friday findings video at keepsakecrafts.net. So
you know I have had this bottle of Tool Magic in my stash for ages. I actually
bought this and here it is, sorry it's kind of a mess, but I bought this I think
for something for my son a long time ago and it wasn't what he needed and so
it sat in the cabinet and lately I've been thinking about it and thinking
about possible ways of using it. And what it is this viscous stuff you can see
it's thick, it kind of coats whatever is dipped into it which is entirely the
idea. It's called Tool Magic but I have
thought of several other ideas besides just jewelry and wire work magic that
you can create. Now the main thing that I have seen this used with is for folks
who do chain mail where you're opening and closing lots of jump rings and if
you have a pair of chain nose pliers they have those sharp edges and they can
leave a dent in your piece and although it may seem insignificant it adds up
over time that you end up with just a dent that doesn't look nice and it needs
to be either tumbled or hand polished out and the idea is that the tool magic
coats the tips of these pliers. It's pretty simple to do there's really nothing
complicated about it. Here's my round nose pliers that I use all the time I
know they look naked I'll get back into that in a minute, but all you do is dip
it in and pull it out, that's it, and what I
found was I really wanted to spend some time kind of shaking off the excess. Oh
I'm making a mess of my table, it's kind of a a bit of an art but you're putting
them in just the right amount, just an even dip and an even pull, sit them like
this like on the edge of a cup or something to dry and it will kind of
drip down. If you really feel you need to you can tap off the excess. I
wouldn't recommend pulling it off too much because you'll end up with these
weird shapes, it depends on what you're trying to do with them,
it does thin out after drying. Here's this pair of round nose pliers that I
did yesterday and you can see it thins out and much better conforms to the
shape of the tool. So you just set them upright and let it dry. So that seems
pretty simple and straightforward but what else can you do with this stuff? One
thing I wanted to mention was a lot of folks said that the Tool Magic tends to
set up on the edges and in the center and I think somewhere in the directions
it says to shake it and most of the people who use it say no, don't do that.
What you want to do is just stir it every time you use it, kind of stir it
from the edges and get it all mixed in and it will last a long long time. I
think it's pretty cool that you have tools like this that you can now use in
all kinds of intricate wire work and not have the fear of denting your wire in
your pieces which I know I do a lot. And I don't yet have a tumbler, although
that's on my to-do list, to clean up all of the pieces that I make and get rid of
all those dings and wire marks, it's really best to just not make them in the
first place. So that is really the advertised use of Tool Magic is to dip
the tips of pliers then they won't mar your wire work, which
is fantastic. I think it's a wonderful product just for that, but I started
thinking about, well, what else can you do with it? One thing I thought of was these
are my round nose pliers, you've seen me use them so many times in my videos and
you'll notice that today they are looking kind of naked because these
little sleeves that fit on the handles slide off on me all the time so what I'm
going to do is dip at least some of this in the Tool Magic and slide on the
handles and hopefully what that will do is make them stay because it's
aggravating. I don't know how many times I've done this, it's kind of become a
habit with a couple of my tools. I think I have a pair of wire cutters that does
that too, that the handles slide off so I'm going to do it right now and if you
want to know the results of how it worked out and you can read the blog
post and if you don't get my blog posts you should subscribe to them. There's a
link to my blog post on this in the description box of the youtube channel...
that looks a little thick... but there's a link to my blog post. I always have more
information. I have links to products and just more info at my blog post and you
can subscribe to my email newsletter and that will give you my blog posts every
time I put one up along with a link to the videos so it's kind of like
notifications here on YouTube which some folks have thought we're kind of dubious.
So you'll always get notified when I have a new video up and get the extra
information that's in my blog post. So we'll see how this works out, but also
some of you may have tool handles that you've gotten
that are bare like this and they really are very uncomfortable
to work with so you could if you don't have a sleeve like this just coat it
several times in the Tool Magic. And like anything it really is best to have
several multiple thin coats rather than one thick coat. So I'm kind of excited at
this prospect of not having my sleeves come off anymore, that would be cool. So
dip them and then just set them like I said on the edge of a jar to dry. Now the
directions for the Tool Magic say let it set overnight but I noticed that within
a couple of hours that were dry to the touch and usable and in fact other folks
I've referred to have said the same thing that two to three hours they are
dry. But what else can you do with this? Well, here's a thought: when you're
beading and here's a piece of beading that I just finished today. I'm so
excited to be done with this bit of African helix stitch beading and I'm
gonna wear this lariat soon but I actually used these quite a bit when I
was finishing this because there were points in this beading where these beads,
where these beads were pretty full of thread and I really needed to pull it
through. Now remember all of these beads if you do any kind of beading like this
these are glass, they will break and shatter I guarantee you they will but if
you use a fine enough needle that should help and if you're having trouble... well
that was fine... let me find one that is
really tight. I just love this spiral I was so happy, if you want to know
more about this I'll have a link at my blog post, this is Carol Cypher's class
on African helix and this is her I think Kalahari Desert lariat, at some
point these beads on the edge fiiled up quite full of thread and can be tough to
pull that last little bit where the thread is doubled. So these chain nose
pliers with the Tool Magic that are so grippy were awesome Now if you feel a
lot of resistance on this don't do it because you may shatter your glass like
I said these are glass you may shatter the glass beads but if you just need a
little extra grip like you saw there just a little extra resistance this is
fantastic. So if you don't do chain mail or wire
work but you do beading just dipping the tips of a pair of pliers in the Tool
Magic will be awesome for getting your needle and thread through, not only that
but not damaging your needle because the these nice Tulip fine needles are not
inexpensive. Many of you know I sculpt in polymer clay and this is a
tool I recently received from Arteza. I'll have a link to that video. I
received a big set of like 42 pieces of different tools from Arteza and I like
this tool a lot, the only irritating thing about it is that it has a seam so
if you are sculpting in clay and rolling something you're gonna have an
issue with the seam where you come along and suddenly there's a line in your
sculpting, really annoying. So I actually dipped the tip of the tool... I ended up
with two almost exactly the same, and one thing I made sure
to do I actually pulled out the tip on the other end and just did a lot of this,
tapped it down so that it would be very smooth and even in conforming to the
shape. Now keep in mind when you do something like this this is going to be
a little bit thicker than this just keep in mind if you love this shape you may
want to pick a shape that's just ever so slightly smaller than you want or if
you've ever looked at a tool and said I wish that was just a little thicker and
a little smoother, tada, you're all set. So I just dipped this in
there and now I have that shape but the seam is smoothed out by the Tool Magic.
The same thing with this tool, this is a dental tool I think it's a gum
stimulator and this is a great tool for sculpting in polymer clay but there
have been times when I wished it was just a little bit thicker and there we
go. I just, so I've got this double ended tool
and one end is a little bit thicker which is fantastic. Another thing you can dip
in the tool magic is tweezers, again, it depends on what you're doing, what your
needs are, but it may be awesome to have just that grippiness that the Tool Magic
gives them. And then here's another one, this this is just a wooden tool with
points and the wood grain will lend its texture to things that you're doing
so dipping an end in the tool magic and letting it dry will give you kind of
like a silicone tip tool only more firm and you can kind of mess with it a
little it's very soft stuff. In fact it's so soft it even says on the tool
magic it's not permanent, so you can dip this, if you have a particular project...
say you want to try one chain mail project but it's not something you're
going to do forever and you want to protect your rings from the toolmarks...
Look, I'm just rolling this up and off, it comes it's actually by design not
permanent so you can just roll it right off and take it off, and also I have been
told by folks who use this a lot that it does kind of wear out and get grungy and
grubby so you can just pull it off, reapply it and have a whole new
protective coating. These are just a few of the thoughts and ideas that I have
for using this product I think it's really magic and that it can do a lot of
very helpful things for us who are creative with jewelry and sculpting and
all sorts of things. If you have other ideas I hope that you'll add to the
conversation and let us know your thoughts on the topic I would love to
hear them. If you enjoy my tutorials be sure to subscribe if you haven't already
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Happy creating, bye bye.