7 Most Overlooked Jewelry Making Tools Around Us

If you pay attention, a lot of things around us in our daily life can be used for jewelry making. In this video, I am going to show you 7 of these things which are normally overlooked, and most of them are about to go to the bin. However, all of them are very useful for general jewelry making. If you get their counterparts from jewelry supply shops, they can cost you much more. The first one is toothbrush head. There are two types: the manual one and the automatic one.

They are not just good for cleaning our teeth. Obviously not this exact one because this brush head is covered with precious metal dust.

That's why it is gray.

When it comes to jewelry making, you can use the end of a manual toothbrush handle to do bezel setting. Because it is made of plastic, it is less likely to scratch your soft gemstones if you slip by accident. But just in case, to minimize the chance to slip, I would flatten the end of the brush handle to give it a better grip. After giving your jewelry a mirror polish, the most common commercial way to clean off the polishing compound is to put your jewelry inside of an ultrasonic machine or by using a steam cleaner. But the problem is that not all gemstones are suitable to be cleaned using these machines, or if you just simply don't have those machines in your studio. In this case, you can use an soft automatic toothbrush head. It cleans our teeth much more efficiently than a manual one. As my dentist always told me. This applies to cleaning jewelry as well. Just make sure you don't mix it with the one that you use to clean your teeth. That's the main thing.

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Cheese wax is a special type of wax specifically intended for preserving cheese. It works as a seal, locking all the mold and bacteria out while keeping the cheese inside fresh. They normally come with some hard cheeses. A lot of them stick to the cheese rind. The easiest one to separate cleanly from the cheese they need to protect is the Babybel.

After enjoying your delicious cheese, you can mold the coated wax into the shape of an olive seed and use the two pointed ends to pick up or place gemstones when doing stone setting. When squeezing the cheese wax, the temperature of your hand should be warm enough to soften it up, but if it is in a cold winter day or you find it hard to move the wax, you can first raise the temperature of your hands with a cup of warm water and then come back to the cheese wax. In this way, you can mold your cheese wax just like Play-Doh. Now you can use it as a pick and place tool when you are working with gemstones. The wax on this particular cheese is enough for making 2 of these wax tools. If you find your cheese wax too sticky, coat it with some dust. Which I always have a lot around. In case you want to get a pre-made one in the shop, the one I have here costs $10 to $20. It depends on where you get it from. Also, the wax part of this one is much smaller and only has one side to pick up the stones. In contrast, The one I make with my cheese wax is double-ended. You can easily modify them into various shapes to pick up different sizes of stones. For instance, a pointy end for tiny stones and a more rounded one for larger ones. Here is the other type of pick and place tools they sell in the shops. They work well for the first few hours, but once the tips are covered with tiny bits of dust, the magic is gone. Also, I found that the tips are too weak for handling bigger stones. I'm sure they must be good for something, but not for stone setting in my opinion.

The other one that you can find around to use for jewelry is nails.

This is a nail that I found in the old ice cream box that I used to collect bits and bobs. Around my place. Choose one with a flat head. Hammer it into a pusher of your choice. Make sure the length is comfortable for you to hold on to. Grind the nail head into a rectangular shape. Safety is the priority in this entire process. I'm wearing a pair of goggles when doing this. Make sure not to touch the nail as well. Because it is boiling hot. Give this end a slight groove so it will get a better grip onto the prong when you push, and then you can use it as a prong pusher. If you want to buy a pre-made one like this, it depends on the make. It can cost between $5 to $30. I have a small hand and find them normally too big or too long for me.

These small eyebrow tweezers are very handy when we travel around, but do you know that you can use them to pick up tiny gemstones when you do stone setting, especially when the stone is less than 1.2mm?

All you need to do is to make sure the tip meets up nicely For these travel tweezers, the main difference between an expensive pair and one that costs less is how their tips meet. I have a video showing how to modify them if they don't. It literally takes a few seconds only to correct them. The link is in the description below.

Q-tips are very useful for removing makeup and cleaning keyboards. But they are also very useful for cleaning jewelry as well.

The dome shape is especially good for cleaning those hard-to-get-into corners and gaps. It grips onto polishing compounds quite well also.

When you order Chinese, Japanese, and Korean takeaway, most of the time it comes with a pair of chopsticks. They are normally made of bamboo and wood, designed for single use. But actually, after enjoying the food with your chopsticks, use dishwashing liquid to give them a very good wash, and then you can use them around your studio.

You can use them like tweezers for picking up jewelry from your pickle, chemical, or any liquid that you don't want to touch with your bare hands. All you need to do is to learn how to use them, and I have a video giving step-by-step instructions of how to handle a pair of chopsticks if you want to learn. The link is in the description below. Other metal or plastic tweezers are not as robust as bamboo or wooden chopsticks. They are either expensive or break easily as they age.

These are known as wine corks, but they also come with some fizzy drinks as well. Mine came with my favourite fizzy apple juice.

After enjoying your drink, instead of throwing it away, you can mount your files onto them to help ease the filing process. A ready-made wooden file handle like this would cost a few bucks if you want to get one in the shop.

Let me know in the comments below if you have found any household items that you use for jewelry making. If you like this video, you might want to check out the one here. I will see you in the next one.