All right. Now you have you have all your holes drilled and the next step - the one requiring the most focus - is at hand. Make sure you're awake and steady for this one.

Step Three: Saw Piercing
Required Materials:
Jeweler's saw (6 or 8 inch are best for small pieces)
2/0 Jeweler's sawblades.
V-slot bench pin.

Clasp and tighten the top of your sawblade into place as you did in step two.  Thread your sawblade into the first hole that you drilled in, and tighten/clasp the bottom of the sawblade into place.   Position your piece over the bench pin so that the saw blade will be going into the v-slot (rather that going into the wood.)

Saw out each of the inner pieces using the design that you glued down as a guide. I like to cut to the inside of the lines. It gives you more space if you make a little mistake.  Cutting outside the line can make it harder to fix any mistakes, and give you an uneven look.   If your saw goes into the bench pin, that's ok. Just don't saw into the wood too long or it'll probably get stuck (and break).

Repeat this for each of the inner pieces until all the inner pieces are sawed out.  Now you can saw the outside edge of your design., just as you had sawed the piece from the rest of the metal in step two.


Step Four: Filing & Sanding
Required Materials:
Hand File
Needle Files
Mini Needle Files
Emery paper from 150-600 grit

Now you have a fully sawpierced piece. Congrats! But that's not the end of the story. The piece you have is very unfinished, and probably in need of filing, then sanding. And after that, there's all kidna of other finishing options to take into mind as well.

But first, let's start with filing.  If you have any uneven bits where the start and end of the sawing meets, you want to file those away with your needle of mini needle files. My favorites are the half-round and round.  For the outside bits of the piece that are uneven, use the hald-file. Always file with an upward stroke, or you risk ruining your files.

After your filing is done, you want to sand the whole piece. This will remove any burs or sharp edges over all. Start with the 150 grit emery paper and work up to the 600 grit (the smoothest/finest grit).  When you sand, the idea is to remove or buff away all the marks left by the previous grit of sand paper and replace them with marks from the current sandpaper used.

After you finish sanding with 600 grit paper, you should have a satin-finish with a dull shimmering shine overall.

NEXT: Forming, Patina's, ETC.

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