How to Make Your Own Hydraulic Jewelry Press

Hydraulic presses are powerful tools in any jewelry studio. Engineered and built specifically to meet the demands of jewelers, Bonny Doon presses are among the safest available on the market.

Learn to build your own hydraulic press with a welded steel frame and powerful hydraulic ram. Gain knowledge on essential operations and guidelines while creating stylish earrings using pancake dies, as well as new techniques for piercing shapes and riveting options when assembling multilayered designs.

Make the Most of Your Hydraulic Press

Hydraulic presses can be intimidating tools for metalsmiths just starting out, but master metalsmith Richard Sweetman guides you step-by-step through the process of preparing materials, selecting dies and working with the press itself to form dimensional forms and unique jewelry shapes. He shares tips for personalizing those shapes including file techniques for creating tasteful ridges and angles in your jewelry designs.

Melissa Muir offers this introductory lesson on using your hydraulic press to craft pendants, earrings and bracelets using its basic operations and guidelines. She shows you how to prepare a pancake die and demonstrate pressing triangular earrings; furthermore you'll explore ways of piercing shapes for fresh looks or riveting multiple designs together using silhouette dies for different effects.

Learn about other presses and tools, like rolling mills, anvils, vises and rolling rods; as well as the differences between manual and electric presses as well as all necessary accessories and tools like hydraulic accumulators/pumps for each press type.

Are you ready to take your forming skills to the next level? Check out Potter USA's Hydraulic Press for Jewelers; it includes everything necessary for creating jewellery right away! This hydraulic press was specifically engineered and built for jewelers by a team of metalsmiths; its safety is unparalleled on the market and includes an exceptional ram so that forming can begin right out of the box - exclusively from Rio Grande!

Make a Pair of Earrings

No matter what your experience level in metalsmithing or art may be, this class will show you how to maximize the use of your press. Learn essential operations and applications of this valuable tool like embossing, texturing and hollow shape formation as well as doing an abbreviated version of chasing and repousse.

Learn to work with pancake dies (also referred to as blanking dies), which save time by sawing out shapes rather than hand cutting them, while creating your own custom forms, piercing shapes and adding riveting options for eye-catching layered pieces. Finally, be introduced to synclastic and anticlastic forming methods used for bracelet creation.

Richard Sweetman understands the transformative capabilities of sheet metal. In this online workshop, you'll see him craft elegant three-dimensional forms using just some annealing, homemade dies, and hydraulic presses or vises.

Each piece you press becomes more beautiful with every press, giving you a better insight into how the metal responds when placed into a die.

Your mind will be blown by what this simple yet powerful tool can accomplish - and it's loads of fun to use!

Make a Pendant

Hydraulic presses are like giant stamps for creating metal shapes and textures. Easy to use and capable of creating larger forms that would otherwise require hand hammering alone, they also save both time and money by producing multiple copies in one pass.

This workshop introduces participants to using the Classic Bonny Doon 20-ton hydraulic jewelry press to emboss, texture, bend and form metal into three-dimensional forms and designs. Over five days, you will learn basic press safety and care as well as several applications for jewelry such as bowls or seamless ring blanks. Furthermore, various anticlastic and synclastic dies as well as silhouette forming dies will be utilized to craft unique designs.

Start by building your own simple hydraulic press frame using parts from an old plumbing project and plastic tubing, while also learning how to build a plunger assembly from old inner tube pieces, for an effective doming effect when pressing thicker metals in your hydraulic press. After that, learn how to size, anneal, and place metals into dies for accurate depth-based results for successful metal pressing!

Melissa Muir of Towed Studio is an emerging self-taught silversmith striving to develop and refine her craft. Currently she teaches at Xerocraft in Tucson, Arizona as well as traveling the US with her husband and two dogs in an RV, learning everything she can about silversmithing by creating large stones and using hydraulic presses.

Make a Bracelet

Get to grips with how to use your hydraulic press safely and efficiently to shape metal into various forms. No matter if you are new or experienced at metal smithing, this course teaches how to utilize this powerful machine for creating beautiful forms quickly and safely - whether at home or in a workshop! You can take these skills home to apply to projects of your own at home or elsewhere!

Use a pancake die to get familiar with this versatile tool, then expand upon that by creating custom forms with riveting options for eye-catching layered pieces. Working with silhouette dies will allow you to craft chic pierced pendant forms - plus learn an anticlastic and synclastic curve technique on bracelets for the final step!

This course is an ideal way to expand the scope of their jewelry-making. A hydraulic press offers a revolutionary new way to shape metal, offering both large-scale sculpture and small cuff forming possibilities. Plus, this tool makes quick work out of difficult steps like chasing and repousse - giving students a deeper understanding of this complex process after this class!

Fold-Form Blanks

Richard Sweetman uses industrial press principles to demonstrate how sheet metal can be coaxed into three-dimensional forms using simple hand presses and dies that work for gold, silver or copper up to 24 ga thickness (any thicker metal tends to tear, krinkle or crimp when compressed in this dies).

Start by building a simple hydraulic press with inexpensive plastic tubing and threaded connectors, then sand and cut lengths of metal rod to form your main plate that holds your dies. Seal all connections using rubber gaskets and threaded rods, adding nuts to support the ram as it rises and lowers.

Melissa Muir takes this basic press to the next level by creating fashionable earrings using a pancake die. Next, she explores new riveting options to form shapes like anticlastic and synclastic bracelets before teaching fold-form blanks - giving birth to eye-catching pendants!

This course is part of our Hydraulic Press Collection, an on-demand video library of jewelry-making techniques you can access anytime, anywhere and as often as desired. Discover more about it and subscribe for access to all Interweave's workshops like Richard Sweetman's Jewelry Basics for the Hydraulic Press with just $9.99 monthly membership fee; additionally all classes can also be streamed live via Interweave Play app membership subscription; discover more and sign up here for your own trial period!