Learning to be a silversmith is not easy these days.
First their is finding teachers for classes and of course the expense of traveling there.
Then there is getting the stakes.
Oh, the stakes ... and we are not talking vampires here.
I have many old books, some that are 100 years old and those that are only 25 years old, that show many stakes used for the various compound and when you go to get them they no longer being produced. That means you only have a few choices - get the ones that are still made from Rio, Otto Frei or other online suppliers and for those no longer made there is eBay, Craigslist, finding a private sale or working with Kevin Potter of Potter USA to make you some custom ones.
I have resorted to all of these. But some of the hardest stakes to get are the stake heads that are the compound curves. Only a few of these are still made and can cost from $100 to over $200. Luckily just a few weeks ago some went up for sale on eBay and I won 8 out of the 12 that were for sale.
They have been in a box for the past two weeks while I took care of other matters and I finally got around to unpacking them yesterday. The were not rusty per say but rather dirty and not the good surface one would want to use.
I thought I would clean them today but to my surprise my shop elf took them to the garage and first went over them with a brass bristle wheel. Then the elf used special (for stakes and hammers only) cotton buffing wheel with the white (steel) compound and voila! Clean stakes.
First their is finding teachers for classes and of course the expense of traveling there.
Then there is getting the stakes.
Oh, the stakes ... and we are not talking vampires here.
I have many old books, some that are 100 years old and those that are only 25 years old, that show many stakes used for the various compound and when you go to get them they no longer being produced. That means you only have a few choices - get the ones that are still made from Rio, Otto Frei or other online suppliers and for those no longer made there is eBay, Craigslist, finding a private sale or working with Kevin Potter of Potter USA to make you some custom ones.
I have resorted to all of these. But some of the hardest stakes to get are the stake heads that are the compound curves. Only a few of these are still made and can cost from $100 to over $200. Luckily just a few weeks ago some went up for sale on eBay and I won 8 out of the 12 that were for sale.
They have been in a box for the past two weeks while I took care of other matters and I finally got around to unpacking them yesterday. The were not rusty per say but rather dirty and not the good surface one would want to use.
I thought I would clean them today but to my surprise my shop elf took them to the garage and first went over them with a brass bristle wheel. Then the elf used special (for stakes and hammers only) cotton buffing wheel with the white (steel) compound and voila! Clean stakes.
Before
After cleaning
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