Product Review: Gemstones Etc. Koil Kutter

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I’ll start this by saying, I’ve been cutting rings by hand with a jewellers’ saw for about 8 months. This does the job perfectly, but slowly. I’ve wanted a powered cutting setup for quite some time. I’ve looked into several options including buying a stand alone slotting saw arbor and rigging an old drill. While it works, it really requires a solid rig to secure your coil. Something I haven’t made the time to do, and I figured I only really needed it to cut stainless, since the hand method was working.

Well, time became a factor, I wasn’t getting even copper rings cut fast enough for my liking.

Enter, the Koil Kutter.

A grooved aluminium box with a slotted lid of sorts to secure a pre-cut coil, a saw arbor and safety guide to fit a Dremel, also available in Proxxon and Foredom compatible models.

Starting with the coil holder. It’s well machined, with attention paid to rounding off corners, not to perfect symmetry, but the look of a tool is beneath secondary to it’s function. Not getting jabbed by right angles is very nice. The box will secure up to a 1” coil easily. I haven’t tested it for a minimum size yet, but if you’re working with a coil smaller than this can handle, your cuts need a microscope to examine. The slotted top secures with a pair of hex driven machine screws, hex key included in your kit. Nice touch there. If I have to be picky about anything, it’s the lack of a baseplate that can be secured to your bench; but it does fit nicely in a vise. Overall finish is a utility brushed look. Again, function over form is perfect with me.

The safety collar screws on in place of the Dremel’s collar. It’s made of durable PVC and notched to fit over the coil holder and guide the blade directly into the cutting slot. While I have to say the notching on the PVC isn’t a precision job, the cuts and corners are a bit rough but it still accomplishes the intended effect perfectly, and to accommodate any variations between your particular rotary tool and the next one a pair of thumb screws allow for some adjustment. All told it’s a simple; yet strong solution.

The blade arbor on the Dremel model doesn’t suffer from any flaws that aren’t inherent in anything else made for a Dremel. Namely the need for that stupid little wrench everyone loses, but you’ll only need it for about a quarter turn after hand tightening. The included blade is .010” thick, with 3/8” keyed hole. Secured with the same hex-head machine screw. It’s well balanced, doesn’t seem to induce any of it’s own wobble. Most importantly, it does the job, and incredibly fast.

So far, I’ve cut 1.2mm copper, .8mm bright aluminium, and .8mm nickel silver without a single snag, and only one ring marred. But how does it cut? Fast, a 4” long coil is slit open in about two seconds. Faster if I could turn the Dremel up to 11…

I’m not going to assign an X out of 10 rating or anything, not my style, but what I will say is this: If you want an inexpensive and effective, powered ring cutting setup, the Koil Kutter is a prime choice and I’m perfectly happy with it. Not spending multiple hundreds of dollars on an alternative option now feels like a good decision.

Have fun
--Charon

Dave Arens of Gemstones Etc. may be contacted directly for orders and inquiries by email gemstonesetc@gainbroadband.com

New Team, new direction.

A couple weeks ago, some of my Etsy friends and I decided it was time to start our own team. Now that things have settled in somewhat. The craziness of the transition and the New Year settled down, and I feel like posting again. I’ll tell you what we’ve become. Creative Handmade Artisans. Not to say we weren’t any of those things before, but that’s what we named the team. So our Etsy team page is up, and we’ve made a home for ourselves on Ning. We’re also setting up a page here at Blogspot. Well, it’s up already, it just doesn’t do anything yet. Follow it though, I’ll be posting there on occassion, also Heather of Heather’s Haven, and Suz of Suzie’s Armoire and quite a few others will be running the place. So I can be confident in telling you there’s going to be a good show from every branch of the craft world. And of course, plenty of Maille.

Speaking of Maille, I’ve seen some horrible excuses for such lately. Everyone here’s been double checking their closures and not chewing through the anodized layer on your coloured rings right? Pliers with teeth suck unless you’re working on stainless.

Hey, Stainless, on the subject, don’t let anyone tell you it’s not suited for anything but armour.

Segue again, I’m off to re-take photos of older creations, it’s long past-due.

Have fun
--Charon

The best news yet.

I’ve been holding back on this post because the holiday weekend, and this week just generally being pretty crazy.

I did some shopping and looking around up in Bloomington a week or so back. It’s a college town, for whatever that says. I won’t go off on an opinionated rant right now, but let’s just say it’s more than a little artsy. That’s good news for me, it turns out.

In looking around for beads and findings and stuff in the local jewellery shops. I ran across The Venue. A privately owned art gallery near the University. So I looked about, talked to the owners, mentioned what I did, and they asked to see it. So I pointed them at Etsy and gave a bit of a tour of my shop. Pretty much instantly I was invited to bring some of my jewellery to show and sell in their gallery.

A freeking art gallery, can you believe it? They host classes on occasion, and shows and a few other things. “Other things” pretty much mean “more exposure” and I’m good with that. They sell what’s on display there, as a consignment kind of deal. While they take a percentage of the sale, it’s a fair percentage. This does mean I’ll likely be raising prices online somewhat. Primarly because I have to match prices between the gallery and anywhere else I sell stuff, contractually. Coupled with the markup I have to make to actually profit after paying The Venue their portion of the sale, it becomes a little problem. I’ve done my best so far to keep my Etsy prices more than reasonable, hell, if I factor the time involved in making maille, I’ve been undercharging since the beginning anyway. Selling through Etsy however, means I only really pay a few cents in commission, and shipping. Which are more than made up for in the necessary adjustments.

What I’m getting at, is, major, major cuts in shipping charges. Probably free on lightweight items. So good news for you too!

 

Have fun,
--Charon

Technorati Tags: chainmaille,maille,chainmail,crafting,etsy,jewellery,making chainmail,marketing,promotion,packaging,shipping,The Venue,Art Gallery

Craft Swap with Tanya

  Something I organized over Twitter with a friend. She was looking for a pair of simple, cute, Swarovski earrings and wanted to organize a trade. Tanya’s a polymer clay artist, and Canadian, but I don’t hold that against her. I love her little dragon pins, each one’s made with a little personality and a story.

So here’s what I came up with for her. They’re for her sister in law for the gift giving holiday of your chosen denomination. ;>

And here’s Ember.

With Tanya’s little character profle:

Meet Ember. She’s a feisty little dragon who will keep you on your toes.

Ember likes to play tricks on people. She likes to sneak around and light candles and fires – if you have a fireplace.

If she gets angry, though, keep your eye on her. She’s been known to set a curtain or two on fire!

Ember arrived wrapped with a little ribbon, and in a sheer black pouch. Another example of great attention to presentation that I really need to work at myself. She made it here quickly, too. Sadly, I was beyond the point of thinking I’d have to send a replacement pair of earrings. Turns out, Moose are just really slow postal carriers, but I was told they made it there safely today. I’ve already re-ordered the Swarovski to replace them, but that’s alright, they can be used for something else.

I set up another swap with one of my closest friends back home, more about the new collection of polymer clay beads tomorrow when I have light for photos.

Have fun,
--Charon

Technorati Tags: Earrings,Craft Swap,packaging,promotion,shipping,Etsy

You want to know how to impress me?

  The short version. This:

The long version. I put in a small order for some beads with Artbeads.com because they had Swarovski in colours I couldn’t find elsewhere. And they offer free shipping in the U.S. I like free stuff. The image above were the contents of the shipping envelope exactly as I opened it. Yes that’s their business card secured in the tissue paper, nice touch. Inside the gems were in compartmentalized little capsule thingies, bagged individually, (in resealable bags even) and labeled. Then wrapped in a layer of… that flexible foam stuff that should be bubble wrap, because bubble wrap is more fun. Lack of happy popping notwithstanding, these little touches of presentation and attention are what make me want to come back to a company.

There was no question I got what I ordered, and it arrived quickly, and with free shipping. I like free stuff. Other companies, even home businesses, (myself included) could take a few hints from this to evaluate their packaging and shipping and labeling.

I’ve dealt with companies that cram unlabeled bags of whatever in a box, stuff contents list inside, and send it off. I’m thankful as all hell for a list of contents since half the time I can barely remember what I ate yesterday, let alone something I ordered a week or so before. The trick when it arrives, is figuring out what’s what without having individual bags labeled. Had I ordered rings in the same dimensions, in two similar looking materials, like Stainless and Aluminum, it’s that much extra effort to judge them by weight, make a label, and integrate them into my storage system (storage system, me? Yeah that’s a laugh, I have tchewbs, lots of tchewbs everywhere.) If a few more companies learned from Artbeads.com we could spend less time cutting open heat sealed poly and figuring out what’s what and more time putting nice labeled baggies in their place until their contents are needed for stuffmaking.

--Have fun,

Charon

Note, tchewb is the phonetic pronunciation of tube if you’re Australian. Ask any of them, ‘struth.

Technorati Tags: beadwork,beginner tips,suppliers,tchewbs,shipping,packaging,marketing

Handmade Artist’s Forum Fall Challenge

 

Think it’s probably best here to say very little, and just link the blog. That said, I’ll probably say more. ;> I have a bracelet entered, which I’m sure is immaterial to you, since you all just want to vote for a chance to win the bracelet donated by Heather's Haven.

Stop by, look around and please comment and vote for me.

 

--Have fun,

Charon

Jackassery, loopholes, copyright infringement, and 35 year old children.

Yep, that’s right. Some pathetic waste of bandwidth and skin set up a crawler to Chainmaille related images over to his own photobucket account, and post them to his site. Around a week ago, Peter Croteau of Virginia made the mistake of stealing images and articles submitted and owned by the members of M.A.I.L. Following him failing to understand the burden of proof, intellectual property laws, or how to conduct himself as a member of a civilized society. His website was shut down.

  That lasted about a week.

  Now Chainmaille.org is back up online, and using a loophole in the EULA with photobucket and several other free image hosting services. Packed with images owned by myself, and many other maille crafters. The solution, aside from pulling all my images from photobucket, is a bit elusive. I’d move everything from photobucket right away if I could find anything on flickr that allows me to link to my images directly, so they could be used in forum posts and such. Since I haven’t found that yet. I’m left with keeping my hosting private, which revokes the license loophole, but it may for the time being mean until I can obtain another hosting option I’m limited in where I can post my images. Unless I begin leaving them here as blog posts and linking to them.

  The rest of the solution, is more important. Association with little Petey and Chainmaille.org should be cut off by anyone with any respect for intellectual property. There’s a reason I’m not linking to him like I try to remember to do with everyone else. His site is an attempt at Search Engine Optimization, without putting any real effort into creating his own content. Search engines require links from outside sources, such as bloggers, community sites, or anywhere else, to partially determine how useful users are likely to find the site in question, and thus the order in which a site appears on a search return.

What Peter wants is to steal traffic from artisans and crafters by appearing in the top slots of search engine results, without actually being a crafter himself. Worse, he wants to steal traffic from you by using your work. Taken without permission through a segment of the EULA that states basically, that while you still own your work on Photobucket, you automatically grant every other Photobucket user the right to publicly display, alter, edit, add to, remove from, etc. He wants your traffic, maillers, for one reason, to generate revenue from advertisement links. Yes, like some of the ads I have here. The difference however is a vast chasm: I’ve made maille, I’ve taken photos, I’ve written articles and the occasional bit of funny; Little Petey there, hasn’t yet shown any ability to make maille, snap photos, or write anything but whiney confrontational blather directed at people who own the things he’s stolen in the past.

What have we learned from this? Peter Croteau is one of the lowest kind of parasites. Photobucket isn’t as cool as it seems. In the end, there’s still assholes on the ‘net. I wonder what Google will think about using the edge of the law to coerce adsense clicks?

Have fun, Unless you’re Peter Corteau of Virginia Beach, VA. If that’s the case, have a stroke, or a cardiac arrest.

--Charon

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