How to Drill a Pendant

Great tutorial, I would advice adding an inexpensive GFI outlet to prevent electrocution, you can get them at the hardware store.

Rich

Awesome tutorial on pendants. I'll have to try that! What's an economical source for the plain chain? I'll love to make some of these for Christmas presents for next year...

I recently tried a variation on drilling that was suggested by a video on Rio Grande's website. They recommend a type of thermally sensitive putty (thermoplastic) to make a custom dish for each rock. 1. to form a basion of just the right depth to keep the work area covered with coolant. and 2. to hold the rock stable so that it does not jump around or allow the diamond bit to skate.


The stuff is a bit spendy, $20 for 1 lb, but totally reusable. It comes as pellets and when they are placed in hot water (cerca boiling) they clump to form a malleable putty. Just patty cake the mass into a patty, position stone in middle and crimp up the edges sufficiently to hold water/or coolant to proper depth. Once the putty cools, (a few seconds out of the water), its a hard plastic basin. Drill your hole with all the guidance above and then resoak in hot water to make putty soft and remove stone. Problems experienced: 1. I didn't make my basin deep enough in a couple of cases- you dont' want that bit to get dry while drilling; 2. I rushed my drilling process on a couple of stones and broke them (my fault as a noobie driller)- little bumps beat longer drill contacts; 3. I needed a bigger hot water source. I used a small dish and a microwave to heat the water, but should have had a bigger basion so I could do more than one stone at a time.

The material comes in pellets. The basins that I made held the water on the stone and were thick enough that the drill seldom pierced the bottom. Soaking in hot water to remove the stone and then massaging the putty to make a new basin makes the material totally reusable.
Basically it worked well and gave me confidence to start drilling more of my products. I had tried clamping but found I needed something to clamp the clamp. These puddy basins sort of sit stable on the substrate under my Dremel Drill Press so are just hand held with the left hand while the right is used to bounce the drill up and down. I hope this is useful to some folks. Tom

I like all these ideas, as a new pedant maker I'm definitly going to use them.

Great tutorial!

I think I may try to use the clip-bath approach you demonstrate here for heating facetter dops.

Tommy:

I deleted my Photobucket images, closed the account, and told them what I thought. Unfortunately, my strategy will only work if several million other PhotoBucket users do the same. Shut the bastards down.

If I can find a site that will allow me to link to 3rd party sites, I may once again post on RTH, but I am a little leery to make the investment after losing over 8 years of posts.

As far as the old posts go, I don't believe they have much value without the photos. They can all be trashed as far as I'm concerned.

Darryl.

Dang, manofglass, you just had to show Tommy up didn't ya?  (GOOD JOB!)

IF it hadn't been for YOU WALT saving the file to PDF we wouldn't have it. THANKS!

Dave