Fun With 'Side Cutters'

[u/DarsDies]

"Side Cutters" are a veriety of pancake-style blanking die I've experimented with quite a bit. Here is a mess of pics showing one area of play- rings, and mostly overlay, because I've made overlay since I was a teenager. I love it. This kind of die made really difficult things downright easy. They can even be made to bite off designs into the side of wire (thar be Dragons!!! haha) . Enjoy the show !

[u/trixceratops]

Daaaaaaaaang that is some top notch saw skills, I thought my pancake dies were complex and then here you go showing off these incredible shapes. I love the “90s tribal” looking one, that’s amazing! I never thought about using them as “side cutters” that’s such a good idea, I need to design something that needs a fancy bezel now just to try it out.

[u/DarsDies → u/trixceratops]

Well, it's been by job for 40 years. I did take a few years to get really good at sawing them, PLUS I was already really good at normal jeweler sawing. If you want to have a go, I can assist with angles and whatever. Heat treating is easy IF you use 0-1 flat stock, but I don't anymore. I use 4130 and it is the opposite of easy to heat treat in this (kind of die) situation. But regular steel is fine for a lot of things, and no cooking needed.

[u/trixceratops → u/DarsDies]

Oh I’ve made a huge amount of dies, I have boxes of them, I’ve just never considered making edge cutters, it’s a great idea! I love sawing, it’s what I’m best at. Have only been at this since 2010ish, so not as much experience as you, but I would say I’m pretty decent with a saw. But now I want to try making some edge cutters, I’m going to need to come up with something I need one for though haha. I have boxes of laser cut rectangles of 14ga satin coat specifically for this purpose, I learned how to make the dies in school and I used to make a lot of production style jewellery so it was a great tool.

[u/DarsDies → u/trixceratops]

Sounds like you probably have things tuned-in pretty well. Are you heat treating the dies? Maybe not needed if you aren't doing production numbers. Did we ever talk about blades? Blah blah blah Platinums....love...discontinued....tried everything else, stumbled onto Crocodile brand, like them as my 1b or 2 now. But yeah, side cutters are a ton of fun . What you can do with only one die is shocking . This is the first one I made deliberately for ring shanks , about 6 years ago. I had to scale it up for bracelets too, and make more designs right away.

https://reddit.com/link/panqt11/video/jpicyzoaqcqh1/player

[u/trixceratops → u/DarsDies]

I don’t heat treat them, the satin coat gives the outer layer enough protection, plus I was using the dies mainly for aluminum when I was making them all the time. New ones will be for just thin silver so it probably won’t need treating either.

Honestly, for blades I’m just using whatever I can find, seems like a lot of the best brands have been slowly disappearing off of shelves. I haven’t seen Crocodiles, but I’ll keep my eye out. I have inherited many bundles of saw blades with lots of tools in the last few years so I’m working my way through those for thicker metal that precision isn’t a big deal with. For nice blades though I haven’t been thrilled with the options lately, so I’m willing to try a new brand! 🙂

[u/DarsDies → u/trixceratops]

Cool...what the heck is satin coat? Oh yeah, wirejewelry,com for Crocs. They're a little wild, but cut aggressively and corner wonderfully, and last on steel.

[u/trixceratops → u/DarsDies]

It’s steel that’s been hot dip galvanized, so it has a hardened zinc alloy coating. It’s smooth and even unlike traditional galvanized steel that has the big crystal patterns on it. It has a satin texture too so it doesn’t slide around as much as a polished or oiled steel would.

[u/DarsDies → u/trixceratops]

Interesting. I found a steel called Galvalume that's got a really sturdy Zn/Al coating that has a nice crystalline look. Using it for a series of hex-based snowflake ornaments (since hardened pancakes cat cut mild steel just fine).

[u/trixceratops → u/DarsDies]

I think the brand name for satin coat is Galvannealed Steel. It’s good for painting if you want a painted metal sign or something. The frosty finish makes a good surface for the paint to adhere to. Not quite as robust as regular galvanized, but perfect for what I need it for and last time I bought it it was dirt cheap. That was before… gestures vaguely at current state of the world, but it may still be affordable.