Jewelry Bench Polisher Demo and Maintenance Info

Hi I'm Erica Stice and I'm the studio coordinator at Halstead. And today I want

to show you our bench polisher, it's item number X2600. It runs about $90. And we

love our bench polisher up here in the employee studio at Halstead. We use it for

multiple things. You could do a mirror finish or a satin finish on it. Also you

can file off rough edges, you can clean off fire scare scale or liver of

sulfur or anything you don't want on it. It cleans it right up and this is a

great tool, we really, really enjoy ours. So I'll show you how to clean and polish

it in a minute, but first I want to talk to you about what the bench polisher

looks like when it comes out of the box and how you put it together. Then I want

to talk about the accessories. And last but not least I want to show you a

little bit about maintaining it. It's super easy, but you need to know.

And let's get started. Okay, here's the bench polisher when you receive it. And let me

show you what all it comes with and what you'll use them for. So these are

two screws to attach it to a tabletop. And they go right here in the front and

you'll use a Phillips screwdriver to attach them to your table. So make sure

there's a dedicated place in your studio for this bench polisher because

you'll definitely want to attach it to the table. It also comes with motor

brushes and I'll show you those in just a minute.

But let's move over here to the spindle. Now you have a left and a right spindle.

So how you'll attach those is you'll place them. There is a cut, I don't know

if you can see this, but this is a round metal bar but in the center of it, in

one part of it, there's a flat surface. So you want to make sure that your socket

is on top of that flat surface. And you'll do that on the opposite side and

it's over just a tiny little hair, they're not even. And you'll slide

that one on and then you'll use your allen wrench to go ahead and lock them

in. And it's very quick, it's just a turn. And this attaches a spindle to on your

bench polisher. Now it also comes with two abrasive wheels. And these wheels

will file stuff down, it will clean up rough metal,

you can use it to remove liver sulfur or fire scale. And how we have ours

set up here in the studio is we always have our abrasive wheel on the left hand

side and our polishing wheel on the right hand side. So we know to kind of

gravitate from cleaning it up to polishing it to a mirror finish. And I'll

show you that in a little while during the demo. Okay now that we talked about

the bench polisher and how to put it together I want to go ahead and talk

about the motor brushes. Now motor brushes allow electricity to flow

between stationary and moving parts so it's really important this is maintained.

You don't want these to wear out, and they will wear out. They can actually go

down about an eighth of an inch before you need to replace them, but I want to

show you how to replace them and how you do your maintenance. This maintenance for

the bench polisher only takes about five minutes and you want to start doing it

about after three months of running your machine. And then after that you can

adjust it to see how often you run your bench polisher and how quickly the

brushes are wearing out. So you have two places where these go into and the first

one is on the back and the second one is on the front. And it's on, both of them

are on the right-hand side. And you'll change them out the same way,

but let me show you on this front one here where I can angle this and you can

see how it's done. So I'll move this forward so you can see the spot. And

right here is where it takes a flathead screwdriver. And you'll do the same thing

on the back. And you'll twist this, sorry there's movement right now, but we'll

twist this and take this little cap out. And here you can see your motor brush.

Now this comes with two to start out with, so these will be your spares. But

this is how they look and you want to just slip them down into this little

square socket here - I think you can see it. They slip right down in there. And you

want to push that top down when you replace it. Slip the bolt or nut back

over it and then go ahead and just screw it in. And you just want to visually

check those every few months. And you'll get used to how often you need to change

them, and you won't have to check that often. But that's how you do your

maintenance, and that's it on your bench polisher. It's super easy and there's two

of those front and back. Okay now that we've

discussed the bench polisher, let's go ahead and talk about the accessories

that you can purchase with it. Now these are item numbers X702 and X704, and

they're made from aluminum oxide. And they leave a satin finish on

your piece. So this is a very fine one and this is a fine one over here, and

like I said they'll leave a satin finish and they're aluminum oxide. And that's X702 and X704.

The other one that'll leave a satin finish is our ultrafine polisher

made of silicon carbide. And this item number is X701. And this one's a lot

thicker than these other two you could see. Now another one I want to talk to

you about in other accessories X703. This is a brilliant buff polisher and

it's chemically impregnated already. And it's made out of a hundred percent long

strand Egyptian cotton. And it's non-toxic and non-allergenic so you will

not need to use a polishing compound with this one. However on this one,

this is our muslin buff and this is item X684. And this is the one we use the

most in the studio when we do our polishing, because we really like to use

our Zip compound with it. And you just put a little bit on there and you polish

this for a mirror finish using this one. And our Zip compound can work

with copper, silver, soft stones. We've used it for numerous things and it's

never damaged anything. So we really like this buffing compound right here.

Okay now that I've shown you what accessories you can purchase for your bench polisher,

I want to go ahead and give you a quick demo of how the bench polisher actually

works. So we have a piece of copper right here that has fire scale all over it, and

also a piece right here that has liver of sulfur. So I want to show you how

well these abrasive wheels work that come with your machine - and you get two

of them don't forget, so you'll have plenty for a while. They last quite a

while. And I also want to show you one quick

thing while we're doing that. I want to show you how to use your muslin

buff with your zip polishing compound for a mirror finish, so let's get started

Alright so before I show you the demo, I want to tell you a little bit about

safety. So the bench polisher kicks off compounds on this side and it kicks off

a lot of dust on the side, so you want to make sure that you wear a mask. And if

you can, get a hood too. It'll help with some of that dust that it kicks off. And

also you'll want to wear safety glasses and also an apron to protect your

clothes. Safety glasses to protect your eyes. And also please if you have

long hair tie it back. It's very dangerous around the bench polisher to

have long hair. So tie it back and out of the way. And let's go on to our demo.

Alright so let me give you a quick demo on how this polishing works. This is a bench

polisher we have in the studio here. And we have the abrasive on this side and

the polishing muslin buff on this side. So we kind of work left to right. Now to

turn this on we actually have a hood for ours because it kicks off a lot of dust.

So you turn the hood on first and then you turn this on and then you spin this.

Now this is as high as it gets, but we don't ever use ours on

that high of a setting. So you can go about medium, it has a line in it so you

can see. And that usually does everything we need it to do. But you're welcome to

turn it up if you want. Now this is going to get pretty loud, so sorry about that.

But let me go ahead and show you. Now this will make your metals really hot, so

let me show you a couple accessories that we have for the bench polisher that

can help. This is a polishing gizmo and you can use this side with chain. So what

you do is you would wrap your bracelet or necklace around this area then you

would close it. And then you can use that to do some polishing on it, with it. And

on this side you can use a ring. And that kind of keeps your hands away from the

heat. Another thing I like to use is the ring clamp. This is kind of like my go-to

at the bench polisher. And I just lock it in, I slam it down to lock it - the piece

of metal - into place. Now whenever you use your bench polisher, you want to make

sure your metal is always aimed downwards towards the ground. Because if

you were to lose your metal or it came loose, it would kick towards the back. But

if you had it this way, it would kick towards you. So always make sure you do

all of your polishing aiming downwards with your metal. And that's for

both sides, left or right, whichever one you're using. So let me go ahead and show

you how fast this abrasive will clean up.

It already cleaned this half of it. Now let me show you how fast it will clean

up - that was liver of sulfur - so let me show you how fast it'll clean fire scale.

So again, I'm aiming it downwards.

And there you go, it cleaned off all that fire scale that was there. Again this is

a really dirty side, so I'll show you it again.

And that's how quickly that works.

Now, to get a mirror finish let me clean this sterling silver over here on the

side. Now I've taken off that rough, that layer of liver sulfur that was on there.

Now I'm going to move over here to the muslin buff and the polishing compound.

And I'm going to just put a little bit of Zip on there, you don't want to put

too much - a little bit goes a long ways. And now I'm going to again aim it

downwards.

And this compound works under heat. So the hotter your piece gets, the better.

And see the mirror finish already coming through?

And now to clean this, if you have extra Zip on there, you're gonna want to use a

bastard file. And you just want to place it on there, on the bottom and it will clean

some of that extra compound off of your buff.

The teeth cleans it off and you can see that that's a little dark.

But if you put too much compound on it, you're going to be working for a long

time to polish your piece. So if you ever have too much that's a quick little tip

on how to clean these buffs off.

Today I've told you about our bench polisher. We've covered maintenance, how

to put it together, the accessories that go with it, and also I've demoed how it

works. And I hope you realize this will save so much time in your studio. I

highly recommend getting one. They're awesome. We've had the same one for three

years and we absolutely love it up here. Thanks for watching.