Go to www.beadaholique.com to purchase beading supplies and to get design ideas!
Hi this is Julie with Beadaholique.com
and today I wanna show you a great new tool. This is the BeadSmith
metalworking hammer and what makes it so special is it actually has 12
interchangeable faces. I've got 2 faces on here already
one on each side. I've got a waffle type pattern
and some dots. It actually comes with four more decorative
faces. I have got wide circles, smaller circles
hash marks and stripes and I'll show you here in a moment
how to go ahead and change out the faces and
how to create some texture on a stamping blank as well. I have an
example here
some star earrings I did and I did those with
the waffle texture. I'm going to that on a bigger star
but in addition to the decorative plates you also have these great
ones which are good for metalworking and shaping
you're gonna get two nylon faces, one is domed
and one is flat, two brass faces again
one is domed, one is flat and two steel
one domed, one flat. Now the difference between the flattened and the domed is the
flat is gonna make it
what it sounds like, it's going be flat it's gonna be like a pancake
whereas the domed is gonna push the metal out
just slightly. So flat would be good for
working out some bends in a metal that you want it to
be able to make the metal nice and straight again. The
domed is gonna be good if you're going to curve metal around a mandrel
or a bracelet blank. You're gonna wanna be able to work that metal
hit one point of contact to curve it, move your hammer
hit another point of contact and keep curving it. So pretty easy to remember
domed is for curved, flat is for flats
of course there's little bit of leeway in there as well but that's a good general
rule of thumb
now about the nylon, the brass and the steel
the nylon is going to be for your softer metals. It's really good for plated
if you hit
a plated metal with the brass or the steel you run the risk of
cracking the plating. It's also really good for thin wire,
aluminum, smoothing out some surface imperfections,
gentle shaping or if you do any hammering on filigree
because filigree is so brittle you're gonna wanna make sure you use a really soft
hammerhead like a nylon. Now brass is gonna be a middle ground
it's going to be for dead soft to half hard
wire and metals depending upon the gauge. So it's also
really good for shaping as well and for
getting out larger surface imperfections and then you're still
think this as your hammer head for
heavy lifting. It's gonna do the big jobs. You do run the risk
of putting some marks into your metal, some work marks
which you might have to then take out with the brass or the nylon
later and that's why it's good that you have an interchangeable face hammer
because if you do a pretty big job where you have shaped a bracelet
with the steel, it has some marks you want to get out, you then go ahead and
use the brass and the nylon to do so
so think of it a bit like sandpaper if you're not familiar with that the
heavier grit
are gonna leave more streaks and then you'll do your finishing work
with that softer tips. So what
I wanna show you now is how to actually go ahead and use this hammer
so you can see that the end caps
are just screwed on and I'm just unscrewing
and both sides have the same function
and then for the actual face
it just pops out. If you wanna place a different face
in you just put it face-down and it catches
there's a little bit of a lip on each of the faces
and then you just screw it back into place
just like so
I wanna show you what
this one, which is the smaller circles will result in. I've got a bench block
with a rubber pad below it to help buffer some of the impact
and I've got a Vintaj brass stamping blank here
so I'm just going to take my hammer and I'm going to
hammer
and you can see what
type of textures that provides. Now I wanna show you what the dots look like
and there we have the dots
and before I go any further and switching out these plates
I want to take my Vintaj relief block which is my very well loved Vintaj
relief block
I'm going to relief to surface a little bit just so that the texture shows
through a bit more
you can really feel what looks like. So that was the circles
and here are the dots
so now I'm gonna go ahead and switch out my faces
and show you the other four and you would put the nylon,
the brass or the steel in the exact same way
got the waffle pattern here
and now you can just do
a couple hits or you can do a lot. So this is what a couple hits like like
just relief that really quickly
got those great little squares
now if you were to keep hammering it you'd end up with something that looked like
that and I'll show you in the end of this video
how to get that really intense texture going so it looks really kind of old and
really worn. I wanna switch out
I'll actually keep that face on their so I can show it to you later but
I'll switch out the dots. The hammer has good weight to it but it's not overly
heavy
which is nice. If you ever forget which side
goes on there is a lip here that you can actually feel so that's where
you're going to
go ahead and insert your face
here are the hash marks
that's what that texture looks like. So we did the wide circles so I'm going to do the
thin
I really like it when they overlap like that. Personally I like a lot of texture
so
usually in my designs you can see that I do a lot a hammering if I'm
going to do it
but it's totally up to you how you want to and we just got one more of
these decorative plates to show you which is going to be the stripes
and then I'm going to do the star. Always
take proper safety precautions when you are working with metals and hammering
make sure you keep your fingers out of the way
If you're going to use any type of metal that might have parts fly off of it of course use
safety goggles
there we have the stripe texture
so now I do want to show you how I did the stars
so I've got a star stamping blank. Looks the same on both sides
and I've got this great decorative head here that to me looks like a waffle pattern
so I'm just going to start hammering and I'll keep hammering until
the entire surface is covered
one thing to keep in mind when using a hammer that has interchangeable faces
like this
is as you are hammering, double check periodically to make sure that the head
has not become loose that all
if it has go ahead and tighten it back up
and then take my relief block
and just sand the top of it
just to expose some those raised areas
exposed the shiny brass below. It'll really make the texture
pop
So there you go. You see without a lot of work
and just by using the 12 face texture hammer
I was able to create a really pretty design on a plain
stamping blank. So that is the BeadSmith 12 face
metalworking hammer. Very easy to use and gives you a lot of different
possibilities for your designs.
Go to www.beadaholique.com to purchase beading supplies and to get design ideas!