The flex shaft — sometimes called a pendant drill, grinder, or overhead motor — is a motorised machine built to assist with drilling, polishing, cutting, carving and the like. It is, in the course book's judgement, probably the single most revolutionary multi-purpose tool for the contemporary jeweller. The name describes the architecture:
- a hanging motor — mounted above and behind the bench;
- a hand-piece — the part you hold, where the work happens;
- a flexible shaft connecting the two;
- a foot pedal, operated like a sewing machine's, controlling the speed.
These usually arrive as one kit, supplemented by a myriad of drill bits, mandrels, discs, wheels and burrs — the head components that affix to the hand-piece with a chuck key. Together they create a rapid spinning motion that makes short work of most drilling, carving, polishing and burring tasks.
Why it changed the bench
Every hand technique the flex shaft serves — drilling by bow or hand drill, polishing by cloth, burring by hand-crank — predates it. What the machine adds is sustained, controllable rotation: speed from the pedal, force from the motor, precision from the hand-piece. A split mandrel with sandpaper, a felt disc with compound, a burr, a drill bit — each turns minutes of hand labour into seconds of guided contact, which is why the previous article on finishing could treat motorised sanding and buffing as standard practice.
The three bench rules
The course book attaches exactly three cautions to the machine — and they are all about discipline, not danger theatre:
- Always return the flex shaft to its mount when not in use — never leave it hanging loosely on the bench top.
- Insert head components straight and well-secured before starting the motor — a loosely chucked burr at speed is a projectile.
- Keep the chuck key in a designated drawer between uses — the one tool that stops everything when it goes missing.
Mastery of the flex shaft is less about technique than familiarity: which head component for which job, what speed for which material, and the muscle memory of pedal control. It repays every hour spent with it in saved bench time — which is exactly what a revolutionary tool is for.
Grounded in the JDMIS Metalsmithing (MS100) course materials. Work with the full motorised toolkit in Foundation Metalwork Skills and Creative Silver Modelling Techniques. Related reading: Achieving a Professional Jewellery Finish and Jewellery Files: Cuts, Shapes and Technique.
Frequently asked questions
What is a flex shaft?
A motorised machine — also called a pendant drill, grinder or overhead motor — built from a hanging motor, a hand-piece, a flexible shaft connecting the two and a foot pedal controlling the speed. It assists with drilling, polishing, cutting and carving.
Why is the flex shaft called revolutionary?
It adds sustained, controllable rotation: speed from the pedal, force from the motor, precision from the hand-piece. A split mandrel with sandpaper, a felt disc with compound, a burr or a drill bit each turn minutes of hand labour into seconds of guided contact.
What are the three rules for using a flex shaft?
Always return it to its mount when not in use; insert head components straight and well-secured before starting the motor — a loosely chucked burr at speed is a projectile; and keep the chuck key in a designated drawer, because it is the one tool that stops everything when it goes missing.
Explore further: find your Artisan Archetype — which maker are you? — or get an AI-guided course consultation.
Visual reference
An ingot is any mass of cast metal, usually rod-like or rectangular. Making one is within reach of any metalsmith with a crucible, heat enough to melt metal, and a suitable mould — and it is how the bench turns a jar of scrap into usable material. When ready-made sheet or wire is not at hand, you can process pieces of metal into home-made sheet and wire, choosing the ingot mould's shape with intent because it largely determines what the metal can be processed into. As a bonus, it recycles unused bits of precious metal: cost-saving and satisfying in equal measure.
Step 1: Prepare the mould
The mould must be clean — any foreign particles become embedded in the walls of the ingot and resurface later as imperfections in the rolled sheet or drawn wire. A drop of machine oil for lubrication is advisable.
Step 2: Melt and pour
Place the clean metal in the crucible and always add a pinch of flux — boric acid powder — over it: this prevents oxygen being included into the melt. Heat until the metal is completely fluid, indicated by a shimmering layer on the surface. Then pour slowly and steadily, without stopping, into the mould. Wait for the metal to solidify before removing the ingot, and leave it to cool on the soldering block.
Why alloy at all?
Most precious metals in their purest form are too soft for durable jewellery, so they are alloyed with other metals for strength against daily wear. But purity carries intrinsic value that wearers care about — so the alloying is exercised with care: add only enough alloying metal to impart the needed strength, without compromising the majority component. Ready-made sheet and wire come pre-alloyed to commercial recipes — sterling, 925, being the most familiar silver alloy — and the same recipes can be mixed at the crucible by weight when you are making your own.
Rolling sheet
Once the ingot has cooled, it is processed into sheet or wire — simple in theory, tedious in practice: the ingot is either flattened (sheet) or funnelled and stretched in a controlled manner (wire) until the desired thickness is reached. The ability to work precious metal into extremely thin sheet and wire goes back to the ancient Egyptians; for thousands of years it meant laboriously hand-beating ingots with a hammer, until industrial equipment — and the bench-top rolling mill — arrived. Repeated rolling work-hardens the metal, so the annealing cycle from the bench repertoire runs through this whole process.
Drawing wire
For wire, the rolled rod must first be filed to a cone-shaped point at one end — that point gets fed through the draw plate. The untouched other end tells you at which hole of the plate to start. With draw tongs gripping the point, the wire is pulled through successively smaller holes, lengthening and thinning it step by step to size. Like rolling, drawing work-hardens; anneal between passes.
Ingot to sheet to finished piece is the oldest supply chain in metalwork — and doing it yourself, at any scale, is the difference between buying materials and truly making them.
Grounded in the JDMIS Metalsmithing (MS100) course materials. Learn the melt-roll-draw cycle hands-on in Foundation Metalwork Skills; see where the material ends up in Fabrication vs Lost-Wax Casting and Annealing and Pickling Silver.
Frequently asked questions
What is an ingot in jewellery making?
Any mass of cast metal, usually rod-like or rectangular. With a crucible, heat enough to melt metal and a suitable mould, a metalsmith turns a jar of scrap into usable material — choosing the mould's shape with intent, because it largely determines what the metal can be processed into.
Why add flux when melting metal?
Always add a pinch of flux — boric acid powder — over the metal in the crucible: it prevents oxygen being included into the melt. Heat until the metal is completely fluid, indicated by a shimmering layer on the surface, then pour slowly and steadily.
Why are precious metals alloyed?
Most precious metals in their purest form are too soft for durable jewellery, so they are alloyed with other metals for strength against daily wear — adding only enough to impart the needed strength without compromising the majority component. Sterling, 925, is the most familiar silver alloy.
Explore further: find your Artisan Archetype — which maker are you? — or get an AI-guided course consultation.
Surface texture is one of the fastest ways a jeweller turns a flat, anonymous sheet of metal into something people want to touch. Most of the effects need no specialised equipment at all — quite often a great number of effects can be achieved simply by the creative use of the tools you already have.
The most elaborate route is controlling small steel punches to shape metal from the front and back — repoussé and matting work that rewards skill and patience. But around that core sit three quicker techniques, and each has its own character.
The hammer: the most basic texture
Any steel hammer leaves an indented mark on metal — that is the whole starting point. Beyond striking flat, you can hammer annealed metal against textured surfaces: steel, concrete, whatever the bench offers, each imprinting its own pattern. Two rules carry the technique:
- Keep the hammer's head as clean and polished as possible — every scratch or imperfection on it transfers onto your piece with each strike.
- Brace the piece on a soft-but-stiff surface — wood is ideal — so the reverse side doesn't take unintended damage.
And the standing rule of the metalsmithing bench: anneal at regular intervals. Texturing work-hardens metal fast, and texture over a crack is no texture at all.
Roll-printing: the rolling mill as a press
Where hammering is rhythmic, roll-printing is sudden and precise. A rolling mill can imprint almost any textured surface that will not harm the rollers — paper, lace, even a leaf from your backyard — permanently into the metal. The method:
- Anneal the sheet first.
- Lay the textured material on top of the metal and pass both through together.
- Set the gap so the mill is tight but not impossible to crank.
- Turn the handle in one smooth, continuous motion — hesitation marks the metal.
Experimentation is genuinely the point here: the effects possible with textures are endless, and every material you feed through the rollers teaches you something. Reticulation — deliberately overheating the surface until it wrinkles — is the fourth texture family, and the least controllable of all; it belongs to the torch, not the hammer or the mill.
Stamping: texture from hardened steel
A stamp is any punch or rod of hardened steel hammered into the metal surface to leave its shape behind. The quiet secret of the technique: you don't need a catalogue of commercial stamps. You can make your own from long steel nails — file the desired shape onto the pointed end, and you have a signature texture nobody else can buy.
Combined, the four families — hammer, mill, stamp, torch — cover nearly every surface a designer can imagine, and all of them reward an afternoon of deliberate play with scrap.
Grounded in the JDMIS Metalsmithing (MS100) course materials. Learn texturing hands-on in Foundation Metalwork Skills and Experience and Creative Silver Modelling Techniques. Related reading: Annealing and Pickling Silver and Silver Soldering: Hard, Medium and Easy.
Frequently asked questions
How do you texture metal with a hammer?
Any steel hammer leaves an indented mark on metal. Keep the hammer's head as clean and polished as possible — every scratch on it transfers onto the piece — brace the metal on a soft-but-stiff surface like wood, and anneal at regular intervals, because texturing work-hardens metal fast.
What is roll-printing?
Passing annealed sheet together with a textured material — paper, lace, even a leaf from your backyard — through a rolling mill, which permanently imprints the pattern into the metal. Turn the handle in one smooth, continuous motion; hesitation marks the metal.
Can you make your own texture stamps?
Yes. A stamp is any punch or rod of hardened steel hammered into the surface, and you can make your own from long steel nails: file the desired shape onto the pointed end for a signature texture nobody else can buy.
Explore further: find your Artisan Archetype — which maker are you? — or get an AI-guided course consultation.
Visual reference
Sheet metal and wire — and the techniques belonging to each — play complementary roles in jewellery. That complement culminates in combining the separate parts into a final piece, via soldering or any other joining method, as simple or as complex as the design demands. The best way to see the possibilities is in real work: the JDMIS course materials use working jewellers' pieces to show how far two basic forms can go.
Texture graduating into polish
A pair of relatively minimalist earrings by Anne Walker: a texture stamped and hammered onto the lower half of copper strips, graduating into a highly polished upper half, finished with sterling-silver wire bent by hand to accommodate the ear. Three decisions — texture, polish, wire — and a complete design.
Sheet shapes under bent rods
The trio of pendants on an eclectic necklace by Sue Yeoman and Michael Jefferies: loosely defined heart shapes sawn from sheet metal, soldered under wires and rods that had been slightly bent and then hammered flat, the wire ends gently fired. Sheet supplies the silhouette; wire supplies the gesture.
Treated sheets as a collage
Liz Hall's earrings take sheet-and-wire assembly further: several sheets, each given a different surface treatment, combined with coiled wires hammered slightly to give the impression of graduating thickness — all soldered together into a fascinating collage. Different textures on same-gauge sheet read as different materials; that is the collage trick.
Nested, kinetic layers
Anni Maliki's pendant consists of nested sheets of staggered size, each carrying a different texture — rolled, hammered, stamped or brushed on. A hole drilled carefully through the top of each layer keeps them aligned, and all are threaded onto a loop coiled from wire. Chances are the sheets are not soldered together at all: they swing freely for an added kinetic effect. Wire here is not decoration but the hinge of the whole design.
Silhouette on a brushed ground
Laura Bracken's simple, distinct 'Raven' pendant: a silhouette cut from sheet metal and sweat-soldered onto a background sheet given a brushed finish, the circular shape then cut out. Sweat soldering — joining one sheet fully onto another — is the sheet-on-sheet counterpart of a bezel: full contact, no gaps, one clean seam.
The lesson of the combinations
Every one of these pieces uses no raw material beyond sheet, wire, and the finishing textures of the bench. The complexity lives in the combination: texture against polish, silhouette against ground, rigid sheet against swinging wire. That is why metalsmithing training drills the individual techniques — saw, solder, texture, form — before asking the designer to combine them.
Grounded in the JDMIS Metalsmithing (MS100) course materials, which feature these jewellers' works as teaching examples. Explore construction hands-on in Foundation Metalwork Skills and Creative Drawing and Essential Jewellery Knowledge. Related reading: Fabrication vs Lost-Wax Casting and Texturing Metal for Jewellery.
Frequently asked questions
How do jewellers combine sheet and wire?
By soldering, or any other joining method, as simple or complex as the design demands. In practice sheet supplies silhouettes while wire supplies the gesture: prongs, chain links, coiled hinges and hand-bent findings.
What is sweat soldering?
Joining one sheet fully onto another — full contact, no gaps, one clean seam. It is the sheet-on-sheet counterpart of a bezel, used for silhouette-on-background designs such as Laura Bracken's 'Raven' pendant.
Can jewellery be assembled without soldering?
Yes. Nested sheets of staggered size can be threaded onto a loop coiled from wire through aligned holes and left unsoldered, so they swing freely for a kinetic effect — the wire is not decoration but the hinge of the whole design.
Explore further: find your Artisan Archetype — which maker are you? — or get an AI-guided course consultation.
If metalsmiths were limited to flat sheets — cut, soldered, textured, but never deeply formed — most of the jewellery we have today would be very flat indeed. Sheet metal tempts you to think of paper, which tears and folds only so far. But metal, and especially precious metal, keeps a level of malleability, plasticity and ductility that paper never had: anneal regularly, and sheets can be deformed, sculpted and beautifully warped in all kinds of ways.
Doming: the dapping block
The simplest forming method uses steel dapping blocks and punches. Flat sheet or wire sits in a concave impression; a corresponding punch bends the metal to conform to the mould. The sequence matters: start with the largest impression (the shallowest dome) and progress to successively smaller moulds and punches to increase the curvature step by step. Two domed discs soldered carefully along their edges make a hollow bead — a classic earring construction.
Chasing and repoussé
Two complementary methods for creating relief in sheet metal: repoussé works the metal from the back to raise a form, chasing refines it from the front. It is punch-and-patience work — the most sculptural of the bench techniques.
Forging and planishing
Forging — working metal with calculated hammer strikes — is universal to metalwork, from jewellery to tableware, and calculated strikes can also curve metal into specific shapes. Planishing is forging's refinement pass: a highly-polished hammer lightly strikes the surface, metal supported underneath on an anvil or dapping tool, ironing out the hammer marks. The late master silversmith Vivianna Torun Bülow-Hübe — her iconic Möbius series for Georg Jensen began with exactly this method — remains the reference name for what forging can do in precious metal.
Anticlastic raising
A subset of forging in which the metal is deformed along two directions at once, producing saddle- and canoe-shaped curves — the flowing cuffs this technique is known for. It typically requires a sinusoidal stake to control and direct the curves.
Hydraulic pressing
The modern, industrial adaptation: liquid pressure makes impressions in sheet (streamlining the more tedious techniques like chasing and repoussé for production work) — forming by tonnes rather than by hours.
And before forming: sizing
When the form is a ring, sizing comes first. Finger size varies with person, weather and time of day, and different countries use different sizing systems — but every system converts to a circumference in inches or millimetres. The US chart maps each size to a millimetre circumference, from which you read off the band length to cut for your chosen gauge of metal. It is one of the basic skills of every jeweller, purely because of the sheer popularity of rings.
Grounded in the JDMIS Metalsmithing (MS100) course materials. Learn forming hands-on in Foundation Metalwork Skills and Intermediate Techniques and Stone Setting. Related reading: Texturing Metal for Jewellery and How to Make a Ring Stone Setting.
Frequently asked questions
What is doming in jewellery making?
Forming flat sheet or wire in a steel dapping block: the metal sits in a concave impression and a punch bends it to conform to the mould. Start with the largest, shallowest impression and progress to smaller ones to increase the curvature step by step.
What is the difference between chasing and repoussé?
They are complementary methods for creating relief in sheet metal: repoussé works the metal from the back to raise a form, and chasing refines it from the front. Both are punch-and-patience work — the most sculptural of the bench techniques.
What is anticlastic raising?
A subset of forging in which the metal is deformed along two directions at once, producing saddle- and canoe-shaped curves — the flowing cuffs this technique is known for. It typically requires a sinusoidal stake to control and direct the curves.
Also at JDMIS: Beginner Metalsmithing Course
New to the bench? See what a full traditional metalsmithing foundation course covers — from forming techniques to a finished silver ring.
Explore further: find your Artisan Archetype — which maker are you? — or get an AI-guided course consultation.
Related reading: how jewellery is made, the main manufacturing techniques.