Bail-Perfect-Centering-Tool

(Transcribed by TurboScribe.ai. Go Unlimited to remove this message.) Hi, Dave Smith here. I'm wanting to show you my latest tool here. During the last 10 years, I've traveled all over this great USA, teaching all kinds of students how to make and sell bezel set jewelry. I've encountered many problems that cause an artist to be very unhappy with his own work. One of those problems is the difficulty of getting a bail centered on a symmetrical piece correctly so that it hangs correctly. Here's a couple of examples. Off to the side, doesn't look that great. You can still get by with it, but you might want it perfect. This tool uses a sliding guide with a V here to force the bezel into a V in a stationary area, play with it a little tiny bit, and it will find its own center. Then you can turn it over, keep a little pressure on the backside here, and then you can take and mark the center line of the bezel, like so, and that tells you where your bail should go. Remember the front of this piece is different than the back of the piece. So it may look bad on the back, but when you check it on the front, you're going to find that your bail is centered where it's supposed to be. Now, of course you can have errors in your soldering, which would make it look bad still, but if you've done this correctly, then your bail will be soldered where dead center on that line, and then you should be perfect on the front. This tool is made of high impact, flexible plastic with stainless steel springs and hypoallergenic synthetic rubber bands for tension. Included with the Bail Perfect soldering tool is the tool, an ultra-fine marker, two bezels for learning your skill set to use it correctly, and an alcohol swab for removing the black lines on your piece or on your jewelry. And you get extra rubber bands packed in Armor All for long life. In the event that these dry out or crack, then you have these replacements. So when you start getting a bigger piece, you may be unable to just set it on here like so, and wiggle it a little bit. You may end up having to turn it over and slide the larger piece with a larger bezel underneath like so. Get it in there centered. Make sure that you have it up against your jaw here, and this one up against the jaw on some of the units, the way this jaw is designed, it may hang up back here a little bit, and if that's the case, you may need to flip around a little bit, then take this and wiggle it, make sure that you're centered. Then you're ready to make your marks again. Before we ship, every one is hand-fitted. The maximum tolerance that it can be off is 0.5 millimeters. In other words, on this bezel here, you can see we have it dead on the nuts on the top, and it's off just a tiny little bit at the bottom. So the total tolerance here in the distance from the edge of the bezel, which would have been up here, down to here is 0.5 millimeters or less. That's a half a millimeter. While you're practicing, then you may want to clean your lines off as soon as you're done with them so they don't become too hard to get off. Of course, the mark, the Sharpie marks, wipes off pretty well and everything else. That's going to be our longitudinal view. Let's find our center. Let's go ahead and make an extra line over here, over here, over here. And over here, and go ahead and run up our other center. And then we can mark this way as well. So now I have a grid, which will make it easier for me to place my ring shank with precision. So that's going to be a wrap for today. How about checking this tool out and others at silversmithingclass.com. And I expect to be doing a lot more videos of this tool here pretty soon. So watch for those.

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