CHAPTER VI 
FILIGREE AND OTHER SMALL WORK Wiredrawing—Tube or " olienier "—Tools—Jeweller's bench. 

Quite a number of tools are required for this work, though most of them are not very expensive. Drawplates, pliers and soldering materials are perhaps the most important, so we will discuss these first. The usual form for a drawplate is that of a piece of steel several inches long, one to two inches wide, and perhaps a quarter of an inch thick. The steel plate is pierced by several rows of holes. Drawplates are made with holes of various shapes—round, square, oblong, triangular,half-round,starandsoon. Theholesvaryinsize in regular order, the largest on a plate measuring perhaps t\ inch in diameter, the next a very little less and the twentieth or thirtieth hole perhaps ^ inch. On another plate the series of holes may commence at about inch and go down to ^ inch. On another the smallest holes may be so fine as to be almost invisible at their smaller end. All these holes are widened out considerably towards one side of the plate. In the construction of these drawplates the holes are drilled first, and widened out at one end. Then a long tapering mandrel of the required section (round for round holes, square for square ones, etc.), is driven into each hole in succession, but to a different depth in each, with the result that each hole tapers slightly, and is a little larger or smaller than its nextdoor neighbour. After the holes have been thus gradated the plate is trued up, hardened and tempered. The drawplate is used in reducing wire to a smaller diameter, or in altering its section—changing a round wire into a (smaller) square one, for example. Sup pose that you have a piece of round copper wire 1/16 inch in diameter which you wish to reduce to 1/32 inch. At one end file a point about an inch long. For gold or silver wire you would not file the point, but produce it by hammering. Then anneal the wire as described below. Put the draw­plate in the vice with the smaller end of its holes towards you. Or place it between cleats screwed to the bench. 

Wire measuring up to § inch may be "pulled down" by hand, but for larger sizes a drawbench is necessary. A description of this tool is given on page 138. Take the wire inyour lefthandwithits pointed endtowards you, andhold a pair of drawtongs, Fig. 17, or large pliers in your right. The end of one handle of the drawtongs is bent round to give a better grip. Try the wire through various holes in the plate, putting the point into one after the other from the far side, till you find a hole throughwhich the wire (and not only the point) will just pass. Put the wire into the next smaller hole, and the point will come some distance through it, and will then jam. Seize the projecting point and firmly pull the whole length of the wire through the hole. If the length is considerable you may, after the first yard or two, hitch the wire round your body and pull without the aid of the drawtongs. The wire, by its forcible passage through the tapering hole in the plate will have become smaller in diameter, longer and slightly harder. Pull it through the other holes in succession until you have reduced it to therequiredsize. Itis usualtooilorgreasethewire,orthe holes in the plate, to reduce the labour. Oil, tallow, vaseline, or even soap, may be used. Grease from a paraffin-wax candle acts well. Olive-oil soap is used by some professional wire-drawers. Is a good plan to wrap a rag, soaked in the lubricant, round the wire at the far side of the drawplate, when long lengths of wire have to be drawn down. 

When the wire has passed through a number of holes it will feel hard and springy. If you do not anneal it it may break. Wind it into a close coil, as small as it will conveniently go to. For small sizes, perhaps an inch or two in diameter; for thicker wire six inches, more or less. With thin wire be sure that no ends or bows are allowed to project, for they would almost certainly be melted in the annealing, so bind the coil with fine binding wire, if necessary, to prevent this. Then place it on the wig or charcoal and gently warm it with the blowpipeuntilit reachesadullredheat. Itisnot necessary that it should be red hot all round the coil at the same time, but you must make sure that every part of the wire has been made red hot once. Use the soft, more gentle flame for this work, not the roaring or the pointed flame, page 28. Small wire can be made into a coil, bound with binding wire, and annealed by hanging the coil on the end of the jeweller's blowpipe and swinging it round and round over the jet until it is hot enough. Cool the wire in water,—not pickle, and remove the binding wire. If you put silver and iron in contact, into any sulphuric acid pickle which has been in contact with copper, or into fresh pickle in a copper pan, a thin film of copper will be deposited on the silver, and it may cause trouble. The wire is now annealed, and all the springiness has gone out of it. In reducing large wire to small it may be necessary to anneal it several times,—when ever it gets hard in fact. Wire-drawing is not a difficult task, but it is well to buy wire as near as possible to the size you require, and so save the labour of drawing it down. 

When a comparatively small amount of wire is required it can be made from scraps of metal in the following manner. Take an ingot mould of suitable form, that is to say, one with a long narrow recess tapering to a point at the end opposite the pour, Fig. 7. Melt up the scraps in a hollow in the charcoal and tilt the molten metal into the mould, seepage 11. Larger pieces may be obtained by cutting a strip from the edge of a thick sheet of metal. But in either case take great care to remove all projecting edges or loose pieces from the ingot or strip before you draw it down. You must at any cost avoid longitudinal folds or pleats, for they would produce cracks running down the wire. So, by means of hammer, file or scraper, true up your ingot that no cracking or scaling can take place. Also examine the wire from time to time while you are drawing it down. To draw wire which is not circular in section requires a little more care. In making square wire, for example, there is some risk in the earlier stages—before the corners have become sufficiently developed—that the wire may become twisted in its passage through the plate, with the result that the corners are damaged, or the wire broken. To avoid this, feed the wire into the hole quite truly, holding it with pliers if necessary. Another plan is to allow it to pass between the jaws of a wooden clamp, or between two boards screwed closely together, before it reaches the drawplate. But you must avoid any twisting.
 
Wire oblong in section can be made from square wire, either by flattening it with the hammer or by passing it through the rolls. The rolls, or flatting mills, are a pair of hardened steel rollers, worked by a wheel or handle, and adjusted by screws. Sheet metal or wire may be reduced to any thickness by flattening it between the rollers. Oblong wire of any size can be produced in this way by using wire of suitable size to commence with. This is a con venience, for draAvplates do not always give the exact shape you require. In feeding wire through the rolls to flatten it, take care that it goes through exactly the same place be tween the rolls, all the while. For if you allow it to creep from side to side it will come out the other side irregular in width. Try it and you will see why. 

Half round wire may be produced with the aid of a round hole drawplate. To do this, take a piece of wire and slightly flatten it, either with the hammer or by passing it through the rolls. Fold the flattened wire in half. Make the point at the double end, soldering the two strips together for a short distance if they seem inclined to separate. Anneal the whole length of the strips. Then pull them through the round holes in the ordinary way. Take care that the two pieces do not get twisted as they go through the holes. Keep them true by holding the blade of a knife between them, close up to the drawplate. Of course, two lengths of half-round wire are produced instead of one piece of round wire. In the same way oblong wire, with the section of half a square, may bo produced with the square-holed draw­plate, but be careful that it does not wind. 

Hollow wire or tube can be made from strips of sheet metal. To make a tube | inch diameter take a strip about | inch wide. Mark off the strip from the edge of the sheet of metal with the dividers, holding that tool so that one leg runs along the bench against the metal while the other scratches the line on its surface, Fig. 18. This plan must, however, be followed only if the edge of the metal is true. Cut the strip off and see that its edges are true and parallel. Make a point at one end by cutting a small piece off each side of the strip, Fig. 19. Now take a piece of hard wood in which a number of grooves of different sizes, semicircular in section, have been cut; or a metal swage of the same form, Fig. 20. See that the sharp top edges of the grooves are rounded off. With a narrow hammer, Fig. 21 for example, tap the strip into the groove, commencing near the edges. Or you may hold a mandrel (a length of round steel wire) in line with the centre of the strip and drive both into the swage with a hammer which has a slightly convex face, see Figs. 22 to 24. It is most important that the metal near the edges of the strip shall be curved well, otherwise the sides of the tube may work thin near the joint. Turn the strip a little in the groove, and by carefully placed blows tap the metal still further round the wire, It is indeed possible to close the metal completely round, so as to form a tube. Should you do this, however, it is well to take the precautions of slightly oiling the wire to facilitate its with drawal, completely closing the tube for a few inches only at a time, and gradually withdrawing the wire from the completed end of the tube. 

To proceed with our tube drawing, however. After the strip has been tapped round a certain distance in the swage the process may be completed by drawing the strip through the drawplate just as though it were wire. But 
to keep the opening in the tube to the same side (it might otherwise wander round spirally) hold the blade of a knife firmly in the gap just as it passes through the drawplate; or, if the join has already got twisted round, hold it true with pliers as it goes through. If you wish the tube to be true inside, first file a point on the mandrel or wire, then rub oil or wax over both mandrel and strip before you close the metal round. But do not withdraw the mandrel in this case; leave it with its tapering point level with the point you have cut at the end of the tube. The mandrel must be longer than the strip of metal (tube). Put them both through the draAvplate together until the outside of the tube has been drawn quite true and it has been reduced to the desired size. Fig. 25 shows the tube before it is completely closed round the wire. To remove the wire push the end of it which projects from the tube through the small end of a hole in the drawplate which just fits it. Then draw it out. It is well to use a copper, rather than a steel, wire for this operation, for steel is practically incompressible, and you may unduly thin the metal of which the tube is formed. Anneal the tube with the copper wire inside it and drop it into oil before you attempt to separate it from its mandrel. The tube may be soldered up the side now if necessary. Hollow half-round wire can be made from strip. It should be first swaged nearly to shape and then put through a drawplate which has half-round holes, a pointed burnisher of suitable size being held in the hole in the drawplate against the strip. Hollow wire of almost any section can be made from tube or strip metal in one or other of the ways described above. Another kind of drawplate, not very frequently met with, is the ruby plate. It is used for extremely fine wire. As its name implies, the hole for the wire is pierced through a ruby. 

To straighten a length of wire first anneal it, and then stretch it tightly. If this is not sufficient,rub it, whiletightly stretched, over the corner of the bench pin; this should take out any kinks. Another plan is to put a number of stout wire nails in a row in the bench, and to bend the wire in a zigzag fashion to the left of one nail, to the right of the next, to the left of the third and so on. Then to pull the whole length of wire through the nails. The zigzag bending which it gets when passing the nails pulls the wire quite straight. 

After drawplates, pliers are the next essential tools for filigree work. Of these you will require several pairs. Round-nosed pliers, Fig. 26, one pair quite small and one a larger size. Snipe-nosed pliers, Fig. 27, two pairs, four inch. Flat pliers, Fig. 28, one pair. Tapered bell pliers, Fig. 29, one pair. A hand-vice, Fig. 30. A pair of slide tongs, Fig. 33. Beech or boxwood clams, Fig. 32. A holdall, or universal holder, Fig. 31, this is a four-jaw chuck fitted with a handle. It is useful for holding mandrels, wire, files, etc. Get all these tools of good quality. As the jaws of cheap pliers either break or bend apart, so that you get no grip, avoid them. The inside surface of the jaws of pliers is scored to keep work from slipping. But the roughening may be such that the work would be badly scratched. It is well to smooth down the extreme roughness, by rubbing the jaws on fine emery paper until they can grip well without damaging the work. Do not make them too smooth, though. To hold work firmly with ordinary pliers requires considerable effort. If, however, you take any ordinary flat-nosed pliers and cut the jaws down to, say, one third of their ordinary length you will find that the strength of their grip is tremend ously increased. This is a way to find a use for broken-jawed pliers. 

Materials for soldering come next. First the jeweller's jet and mouth blowpipe. These are the tools generally used, though a few jewellers prefer to have a small hand blowpipe with bellows. If gas is not available the spirit lamp may be used instead. Jeweller's wig, Fig. 34. Charcoal. Some small pieces of thin sheet iron. A little plaster of Paris. Borax, slate and brush. Tweezers for picking up pieces of solder, or parts of the work. It is well to have a pair of these of brass, for they can be used for lifting small articles into or out of pickle. Steel tweezers are not suited for this work. A very efficient pair of brass tweezers can be made from a strip of hard sheet metal, 7 inches long by | inch.wide, size 10 on the metal gauge. The strip has only to be folded in half, hammered a little, and the loose ends cutand filedtoapoint. Bindingwire;thisisbestcharcoal iron wire. The small sizes required can be obtained in J-lb. reels. Get Imperial Standard Wire Gauge Nos. 28 and 32. A little sulphuric acid (vitriol) for making pickle. A small copper boiling out pan. For gold you use nitric acid pickle in a porcelain pan. The use of these pickles is explained on p. 24. 

You will also require :—(1) Needle files. These are slender files, 5 or 6 inches long. They are made in a number of shapes. Flat—one narrow side is sometimes left smooth or " safe ". Rat-tail—these are circular in section. Half-round—flat on one side and convex on the other. Fish­belly—convex on both sides. Knife-edge—triangular with one narrow and two wide sides. Donkey-back—triangular, with one cutting and two smooth sides. Square. Three­square—in section an equilateral triangle. (2) A small, very sharp chisel for cutting filigree wires. Wires have often to be cut through at, say, an acute angle. To file them thus would be wasteful. But if you rest the part to be cut on a piece of brass or bronze (a worn halfpenny will do,) you may cut it cleanly with the chisel. (3) A pair of straight snips or nail scissors. Japanese filigree workers fasten a loop to the handle of these, through which they slip finger or thumb. The tool is therefore kept on, if not in, the hand all the while. (4) Some scorpers. Get a few of these, flat and round, 1/16 inch across the face, and one knife-edged. (5) Piercing-saw frame, Fig. 35, 3 or 4 inch. (6) Saws, No. 00. The easiest way to put a saw in is to fasten it first in the top jaw—that farthest from the handle. When necessary, thread the saw next through the hole prepared for it in your work. There press the top jaw firmly against the bench, so as to shorten the span for the blade. While the frame is thus com pressed, fasten the loose end of the blade in the lower jaw. When the pressure is removed the saw will be stretched tightly. The teeth should point towards the handle, so that the saw cuts when it is pulled, not like a carpenter's saw—when pushed. (7) Drillstock and drills. The former is more useful if fitted with a universal chuck. (8) Cut ting punches, Fig. 36. These are steel punches with a sharp, circular edge. They are for cutting out small discs from sheet metal. Be careful in using them not to let the sharp edge of the punch come in contact with a steel stake. Always put a piece of brass between the metal from which you cut the discs and the steel stake upon which you cut them. Give the punch a smart blow at first. Then if the metal is not quite cut through, hold the punch firmly in the circular mark already made and give it a few lighter taps, rocking the tool gently from side to side as you do so. It gets through easier so. A cake of lead or zinc is often used instead of the steel stake for cutting discs upon. Of course no brass is required in this case. The discs when cut will be slightly convex, but to boss them up more a doming block, Figs. 37 and 38, and set of doming punches are useful. (9)Thedomingblockisa squareoroblongpieceof brassorsteelinwhich iscuta series ofhemispherical hollows. These cup-shaped recesses vary in size from l\ inch to -h inch. The doming punches, Fig. 39, fit the hollows. To produce a rounded boss or half-bead from a disc of metal drop it into a hollow which is rather larger in diameter. Set the disc level in the recess. Take a suitable punch and place it quite centrally on the disc. Give it a good blow with a hammer, and the metal will be driven into the hollow. If necessary it may now be shifted to a smaller hollow, and made into a complete half-ball by using the punch which corresponds with the hollow. You may even file off any metal which projects above the block before you remove lie half-bead. You can make a half-bead of any given size by taking a disc of metal one third larger in diameter. If the metal gets hard, anneal it. If you wish to dome up a disc only slightly you have but to drop it into a hollow of considerably larger diameter, and use a large punch. A doming block is not, however, an essential tool. Suitable hollows may be hammered in a cake of lead, tin or zinc or any other material which is hard and tough enough for the purpose. It is well, however, to put a sheet of thin paper between the disc and the block to prevent the transference of any trace of tin or lead or zinc, as the case may be, to the boss. (10) Asandbag,Fig. 40. (11) Triblets. Thesearetaper ing rods or mandrels, generally of steel. They are used for " setting " rings or collets true, or for enlarging them after they have been soldered. To do this, you slide the ring on to the triblet as far as it will go. Holding the large end in yourhand,restthe narrow endofthetriblet uponthe bench, so that the ring is pressed against its front edge. Tap the the ring gently with the mallet, turning the triblet all the while. Keep the triblet pressed as far through the ring as it is able to go. When the ring fits the triblet it is quite circular, though it may yet require flattening as described below. If, however, you wish to enlarge the collet, use a steel hammer. This will stretch the metal quickly. Take care though that your blows are placed regularly, and that you stretch both edges of the collet equally. If on account of the hammering one side of the band grows convex as it rests on the triblet, you must hammer on the middle and the concave side to bring it true again. Triblets are made in various sizes. An old cotton spindle makes a very good small one, for it tapers from about £ to over £ inch in diameter. Oval, oblong or square triblets are also used. You should have others which go up to § or f inch in diameter. For sizes larger than this it is usual to true up a ring on the bickiron or sparrowhawk. The arms of these tools are not always truly circular. But you slide the ring along the arm as far as it will go, and turn the ring while tapping it, instead of the stake as before. When a ring has been trued up on the triblet or bickiron it will be circular, but it may not be quite flat. So a flat stake (12) will be required. This is a piece of steel 3 or 4 inches square, perhaps an inch thick, and quite smooth and true on top. The domestic flat-iron makes a very good substitute. Blocks of wood should be fastened each side of the handle so that it will stand firmly face upwards. (13) The jeweller's hammer, Fig. 41, has one flat and one rounded face. It weighs only a few ounces. To flatten work without marking it in any way a horn mallet, Fig. 42, or a fibre-faced hammer, Fig. 43, should be used. The mallet is much the lighter tool of the two. (14) A steel burnisher or two, Figs. 44 and 45. (15) A jeweller's eyeglass, Fig. 46. If you take a length of piano wire, form a loop at one end for the glass, and bend the remainder into a curve to fit round the back of the head, the glass may be kept in position without effort. (16) The jeweller's bench, Fig. 47, has a large semicircular piece sawn out of the top in front. From the centre of this curved recess a piece of wood projects. It is known as the " pin." It is a piece of hard wood, perhaps 4 inches long, with a sloping top, and it is let into the front edge of the bench. Work is held on or against it while it is being filed or otherwise proceeded with. To catch the filings a large piece of sheepskin is fastened under the top of the bench. It extends below the pin, across the recessed front of the bench from arm to arm. The soldering jet is fastened on the right hand arm, near the extremity. The gas burner or lamp is right in front of the worker. A large globe filled with water, standing on the bench, throws a concentrated spot of light on the pin, so that the work is always well illuminated.