Hey there reader, it’s a very occasional YouTube roundup.
I have Adam Savage first, with a bunch of jeweller-related material in his 2025 end-of-year roundup. Starting at 11m40sec but especially at the end of this vid (23m42s) he was talking in praise of what he calls a piercing (but we all know as a jewellers’) saw. He goes into the importance of blades also, and yes, reader, I name check my faves in several places on this here blog (Vallorbe, always). A hearty agree on his summation too – I have a band saw and a jigsaw (the latter inherited from Bruce’s dad) – and as we all know, after much investigation of nibblers and other cutters, I chose to cut the hundreds of meters of Juukan Tears by hand. Sometimes putting your shoulder to the metal is just faster.
He also talked about his (really expensive) micro motor, before launching into his new toy, essentially a powered scalpel blade, which also sounds fun. (I made one or two architectural models last year and I gotta say it mighta come in handy.) I’m not a micro motor owner – still a flex-shaft/pendant drill user – but I’ve tried one or two really good ones but cannot work up the use-case to shell out for one. That said, I went to a Peter Keep stone setting demo a couple weeks back, and the prof of setting endorses the Saeshin Strong 207. Price-wise, from a quick search, that actually seems quite reasonable.
Part two – this guy Alec Steele (strong start), a blacksmith from the UK (of course), and has been getting some play on my devices of late. His day-in-the-life of a mechanical pencil maker in the Jewellery Quarter in Birmingham was a fun jaunt; interesting and almost informative enough…. I’m now desperate to know the content of a solder that you can melt at such a seemingly low temp, but I’m thinking it’s not widely shared.
I’ve since seem some of his steel vids (because, you know, steel) but since I own many a mechanical and clutch pencil, including an antique from my great-uncle that must have been corporate merch as it says “Shell Spirit” in enamel on its finial (checks out – I believe the owner was a mechanic and/or driving instructor) I’m sharing this one.
I don’t know about your pencil collection, but none of mine are much more fancy than the Shell merch (I got it working today – the lead must be well past 50 years old!) or the Staedtler Mars Technico I got for drafting in first year IA, that one containing barely six inches of led. So I’d not heard of Yard-O-Led and I didn’t even dream there was a whole company devoted to making solid silver pencils, but in several ways I’m delighted they exist. The living history of the process and machinery are incredible (and somewhat terrifying!), and the fact that you can order meters and meters of silver tube in the UK is also eye-opening. We’re all aware of the silver price right now, so I’m not going to be a collector any time soon, but in times of diminishing silversmith skills, I’m happy that this company is still alive.
I’ll let you know the next time my internet serves up more related and relatable tips and tricks from allied makers.