 Hi I'm Andrew Berry and welcome to At The Benches YouTube channel. We're going to look at a very simple technique and we're going to be pears in cutting, but cutting straight lines. This is one of the first techniques that you should really learn to master when you start your jewelry journey or jewelry career. It is something that is vitally important you know how to do for two reasons. First reason is it will save you money so you don't keep snapping your saw blades. And also the second reason is for you to cut accurately with the most minimal amount of filing and finishing up. Which eventually will save you time and obviously time is money. We're going to be looking at putting a pears in saw blade into the simple fixed frame saw to start off with. Pears in saw blades come in a variety of sizes and they are advertised at the bottom of the table. Pears has perhaps three stroke O, two stroke O and what do all these mean? They simply are gauges on the thickness and the number of teeth on a blade. They go from the thickest blade which has the least number of teeth to the most finest blade with the most teeth. Now which pears in saw blade do you need for a particular job, particular metal thickness. Another thing is to have at least three teeth in contact with the metal at the same time. It's just a rule of thumb. For me personally I don't bother to that rule of thumb because my life is too short and again time is money. So I will buy just one saw blade for general purpose work which is a three stroke O. There's maybe watching this who think well in fact I prefer a two stroke O and that's a two with a stroke with a zero. But it's entirely up to you what you prefer. I've always used three stroke O. It's just run the mill. I just ordered them by the gross. They come in bundles of 12 and that's 12 bundles of 12. And they will come to you in these little bundles that are wrapped up with a very very fine wire. Yes I will get a different blade if the job calls for it. If I'm doing a lot of pears in very intricate delicate pears in on quite thin metal, well then yes I will get a fine blade. If I'm doing a lot of work and I'm cutting out big thick three four millimeter thickness pieces of metal, well then it's going to be silly to have a very fine blade because I'll be there all day cutting out. So yes I would then use a thicker quarter blade with less teeth which is a bit more than aggressive cut which means I'll be able to cut through the metal quicker and faster and easier. But for everyday work these bundles three stroke O are the best and there's lots of brands out there. There's German brands Swiss brands you just have to go along and try and buy whichever one that you can get on with. What I would advise you not to do is buy cheap perhaps unbranded blades. You buy cheap and your work will suffer. I always buy I think these are Jaguar blades. I think they're Swiss I've always had no problems with them at all but again you can buy sore blades that are suitable for platinum for instance for a harder metal. Perhaps in that may the blades may be slightly angled in a different way that stops the blades from clogging up. So again there's lots of blades out there I won't tell you to go for a particular brand because everybody will have their own brands that they prefer and it's up to you to try it. There's Vellorbe, there's Swiss King, there's loads out there. So just go ahead with the catalogs, order a bundle of 12, see how you get on with them when you find a brand that you love. Just keep ordering that brand and you know that you'll have consistent results so don't buy cheap blades your work will suffer. Obviously the teeth will only cut in one direction and the teeth will be angled in a particular direction and when you get your sore blades in the bundle like this there's a couple of ways that you can take your sore blades out. Then unravel the very fine wire as we've got there, don't unravel them all the way down, keep it down to about the last inch or so and then just roughly twist that around and then all you can do there is pull your blade out very simply like that. Or there's another way find out which direction the teeth are going and all the blades will go in the same direction. You may need to put your visor on to have a look for the teeth. Alright then so with this I can see that all the teeth are going downwards. All the teeth are pointed in this direction. What I would do then is get a marker. Don't actually happen to have but I would get a marker, a mark all the blades towards the top. Alright you'll understand why now. So then instead of removing this wire off the bundle all you have to do is grab a blade just separate it from the bundle, grab your tweezers and literally pull that blade up and out. And the blade will come out nicely because all the teeth are pointing downwards and that keeps all the blades together in the bundle as we've got there. So there's two ways that you can take those blades out. So let's put one of these blades into our fixed frame, Pearson saw. You need to have the frame in this position when you are cutting and you always cut on the downward stroke which means the teeth have to point downwards in the downwards direction. So take your saw blade, look at it through the visor, find which direction the teeth are actually going or just gently rub your hand up and down the blade and your blade will tell you which direction those teeth are pointed. And as I'm putting my finger down here, my finger is scagging this way but it runs quite smoothly that way. So I know the teeth are pointed upwards, so I need to turn the teeth now pointing towards me. I will get my saw frame, I would put it against edge of my bench or my peg as we've got here and have the blades and the teeth are pointing towards me and I would fasten one end into the clamp. Roughly around about, what's that, 10, 12 millimeters into the clamp half an inch. Then I would push either push with your chest, you could push with the middle of your chest by there like that or you can push with your shoulder or push with one hand like this, whichever you feel is easiest but the idea is you have to put tension into this frame. You have to squeeze the frame together. I would always put it into my shoulder or put it into the center of my chest there and push the frame and as you push the frame, you can see the frame coming closer together. So then as you push forward, make sure the blade now is in the top clamp in between the two pieces of metal and as you push forward, tighten the clamp up and then release. And what you want is this sound. Okay, a nice high pitched sound. The blade has to be under tension. What you don't want to do is put a blade in and it sounds like this. Okay, the blade is loose, you can see it moving. The blade will break, the blade will bend and that is not what you want. And as I push forward, you can see the blade bending. You want to be able to make sure that blade is nice and tight. It's going to be sounding like this. A nice high pitched tone and the teeth are pointing downwards. Practice on a piece of metal. I've got a bit of copper here and what I'm going to do is just get a nice straight line and I'm just going to practice cutting straight lines across my piece of copper. I will use a ruler for this or use a pair of dividers and just simply come across and just simply put a line across my metal like that. And it's always important to cut on the waist side of the line. Never ever cut directly on the line. Why? Well, it is because if you cut directly on the line and your line is a little bit wobbly, when you come to file that straight, you're making the metal smaller. Also, you've got nothing to file down to. You don't have to any line to file to. So you know what size the metal needs to be. If you saw on the waist side, about a half a millimeter away from the line on the waist side, so it's the bit of metal that you don't need. Then you can always get your file down to the line itself. So you know that is as far as you need to go and you can get a nice straight line. And this applies if you're cutting curved lines and round circles and all that sort. So always cut on the waist side of your metal. So then you've got the line that you can still see that you can then file down to. So this is my piece of metal and now we're going to cut. This is going to be the piece of metal that I want to keep. This over here is my waist. If you want to come along, just mark it with your scribe lines like that. So you know it's waist, if you can do, it's entirely up to you, whatever you want to do. As long as you remember, that is the waist side. I will always put some magnification on for this. And what you need to do now is to get your blade. Some people like to lubricate the blade with some wax. Some people would use spit or beeswax or candle wax. I always use a product called Cutloob or Burlife. I find this is absolutely brilliant. It really does help with the cutting out. Just simply put the wax onto the blade or alternatively you can always get the wax and rub it along the line. And then the wax is always on the line. So as you're cutting, the wax will be constantly lubricating the blade. Whichever way you want to do it, whichever way works for you, find out which one it is and that will be brilliant. Okay, so we need to cut on this side, which is to my right over here. It doesn't matter if your bench peg is sloping as I've got here or it comes out completely horizontal and parallel to the ground. In this case, because in straight lines, it doesn't really matter. You need to soar vertically. So you need to soar like this up and down vertically. That is the way you pierce and that is the best way. But I've got a little tip for you here. So let's start cutting. You need to put your nail right by the side of the line that you have just marked. And what you need to do is guide the blade alongside the edge of your nail. Perhaps just take the blade up a couple of times, just gently running along the edge of the metal. And what you want to do is just to start a little cut on the waist side. This is going to be quite awkward for a lot of people because they will push too hard on the blade or try and pull it down. But what you need to do is just put your nail, excuse my gummy fingers, I've been busy working today. And just put it, and what you want to do is just take the blade up a couple of times. And what that does is just takes that edge off the metal, which really helps you start off cutting. Now, another little tip for you is that yes, I did say we need to keep the sore upright when we're soaring. But when we're cutting straight lines, what really helps is just angling that sore forwards by about 15-20 degrees from vertical, as we've got it, something like that. That will really help you cut straight lines. Don't try and do this if you're cutting circles or corners or curves or wiggly lines. It just won't work. Then you need to bring the frame upwards by cutting straight lines to make those lines more accurate. Put the frame in this direction and sore like that because this edge then will go along the line. So this edge then will go along where you're cutting and the bottom edge will follow resulting in a nice straight line. So we've got our little cut out there, put your blade back into that, and you need to cut in this area by here of your little cut out. Don't bring it down here because you've got too much movement in the metal. You can put it to the side of your peg if you want to here, but I like to bring it into this area by here. This is the centre of my universe. Everything happens around this area here. So this is where we need to cut. And what you may need to find is you go forward, you may need to bring the metal away from the top of the V here. So we've got that little mark. You can keep your nail in there if you want to to go up and bring it down. Remember the blade cut on the downward stroke only. So it's not much point pushing the blade forwards as we're cutting because there's teeth appointing downwards. So what you need to do is come down. And then just release the pressure forward and bring the frame back up and then pull down. And just a gentle, gentle cut. Release, go up gently and then cut, but just gently pushing forward, hardly any pressure at all. And then go back up. So it cuts on the downward stroke. So as my frame comes up, it's very, very relaxed. And as you come back down, a slight pressure forwards. I'm looking at to my line, as you can hear, it cuts, cuts. And having it going forwards, the blade going forwards we got here, we're going to get a nice straight line. What you need to do is blow some of those findings that lamel away and keep sawing. Always keep cutting on the waist side. Okay, so I'm cutting downwards, relaxing, cutting downwards, gently pushing forward. You're going to hardly see any bend in my blade at all. I've gone so far, I'm just going to pull the whole thing towards me and I'm going to keep on cutting. If you want to put your fingers through your frame this way, you can do. Don't ever do this and put your fingers in front of the blade. You like it to cut your finger. Always keep your fingers to the side of where you're cutting or behind. Never keep your fingers in front of the blade. Just carry on. With our blade angled forwards. And then just when you come towards the end, you can hear the metal. The pitch changing, the sound changes and then just before you break through the last millimeter or so, ease up on the pressure and just gently go up and down. And then hold onto that piece there. And as you can see, we have got a fantastic, beautiful straight line. And you should still be able to see the line that I originally scribed. If when you're cutting out, let me show you as an example. See, I'm cutting out and I'm cutting away like this and I'm going well. And then same my blade snaps for some reason. And it snaps in this little area by here. And I've gone all the way in so far. And it snaps. It's going to remove my blade. So what you would do then, your blade snaps. Take your broken blade out. Put that to one side in your tray. Never throw them away. Get your blade, your new blade. Get it so the teeth again are pointing towards me. Can my handlers up here? Clamp it into place, push in, get a bit of tension on that blade. Ping it. Beautiful. Now that is what I would do. I'd always put the blade on. Then I would start to cut gently. Now because the teeth are made, they sort of do this. They sort of overlap and do that. So the teeth are slightly wider than the blade itself. So what you're going to find is that as you cut, you're going to take the edge off those teeth of the blade. So the cut is going to get marginally finer and narrower. Okay, this gap here. When you put a brand new blade on, the teeth now we're going to be pointing outwards. So this blade now is going to be a fraction wider than your cut. What I'd advise you to do is put your blade in and then start gently from this end. Gently cut through. Okay, until we get to here, then we can carry on cutting. What I would never do is get the metal and then try and put the metal on the blade where you have just started or where you've just finished your cut. Because then you're going to have a hard job trying to cut. Because the blade now is trapped. The blade can't move up and down because those teeth now are wider than where you have started to cut. You won't be able to move. If you do try and move, it's going to be awkward and you may find that you won't be able to start off cutting nice and straight. So always put the blade into the frame and always start back where you started. Then go forwards and then you can carry on cutting. And make sure that you're holding the metal down nice and tight. Make sure you press, put your thumb underneath, really push down and hold down. What you don't want to do is have the metal moving like this and chattering about. No good, the metal has to be nice and flat and straight. Then you can always be guarantees gorgeous straight lines. Every single time. Come in through to the end. These are for fraction. There we go. And don't forget, the blade is this length. You've got about five inches of teeth here. Make sure you use the whole length of the blade as well. Don't come along and start trying to cut out. Are you doing this? It's no good. Strokes have to be long, have to be rhythmical. Maybe using the whole length of the blade. Otherwise, if you do this. You're going to be wearing the teeth out and the sore cuts are not going to be perfect and straight and in a lovely line. They're going to be wiggled, you wiggle, you all over the place. Remember, long strokes blades slightly forward. And you're going to get the most perfect sore cuts, straight lines every single time. My name is Andrew Berry for At the Benches YouTube channel. Thank you so much for watching. I'll see you on the next film. And don't forget, please subscribe if you haven't subscribed already. And don't forget, please share this film with any of your friends who you feel would benefit from these little techniques that we give you on At the Benches YouTube channel. My name is Andrew Berry for At the Benches YouTube channel. Thank you for watching. I just see you on the next film. Bye bye.