Well, yes, and when done properly it's a real sleeper talent. This sleeper opportunity arrives as a complete breakthrough multi-media CD-ROM tutorial that shows - revealing some secret Scottish processes that are centuries old - how to produce one-of-a-kind, valuable wood jewelry at a fraction of the cost of other jewelry making disciplines.

Put away for a moment all the prejudices you may have toward klunky wood jewels. With some wood jewelry making processes the materials cost is zero . . . and the other techniques, fully capable of producing delicate, unique jewelry, are low cost, too. Yes, the rare and exotic woods can be a bit pricey but for the profit minded it's nice to know that the markup on hand-made wood jewelry can be spectacular. Of all the techniques for making beautiful jewelry, wire wrapping is probably the easiest and least expensive. Truth is, you could be producing magnificent laminated or Scottish-stylel colorfully pressed wood pendants like the ones below in a day - if you've learned the right basics.

The comprehensive multi-media CD-ROM computer program (it gets its lessons across with short videos, narration, text, pictures, illustrations) providing you with the basics of four major techniques for making wood jewelry. They are:

• The Lamination Technique
• The Checkered Bar Method
• Scottish Wood Bundle Process
• Random Template Method

- The instructions and wood jewelry creations seen here were produced by Gerald Wykoff, who has been developing breakthrough methods in jewelry making for decades. This tutorial is the cap piece to his 5-part Professional's Jewelry Making Suite. The Wood tutorial alone consists of more than 100 pages of step-by-step instructions in Adobe PDF format.

Master Wood Jewelry does much more than merely show you how to make a few wood designs. That's because, for good reason, some folks dismiss wood jewelry, contending its rather klunky appearance doesn't lend itself to serious wear jewelry. This program of instructions takes a contrary view: it emphasizes - as you can see from the pictures here that properly design wood designs can compete even with the metals.

By showing you how to cut, sand and polish a whole series of wood articles, it teaches laminated, template and bundling methods whose principes can be adapted and expanded on, resulting in an astonishing array of intricate, disciplined jewelry creations. Using the instructions has a launching platform, you'll won't be stuck with one system but rather learn to innovate with a variety of techniques. You will learn how to turn ordinary twigs into earrings, finger rings, pins, pendants and bracelets.

Unlike most books on wood working, this one shows you how to avoid expensive equipment costs by making a few simple, original devices that the author developed. A few of these devices include a jewelry working platform, a jig for quickly making wire pendant bails as well as a sanding pylon which converts the agonizing task of sanding wood into an easily performed exercise.

Finally, an entire section is devoted to including other jewelry making disciplines into your wood work. You'll learn to add metal findings, gemstones and to combine wood jewelry with silk/fabric and round wire techniques thereby producing distinctive jewelry creations unlike anything else you've seen.

Please address all questions prior to bidding to jerwyk@comcast.net

DISCONTINUED . . . DISCONTINUED.
This tutorial has been discontinued because the company offering the particular grinder used for the conversion no longer offers the product.

It is so massively filled with information and DIY help for the wire jewelry artisan that the program comes to you on a DVD and it's in Adobe's PDF format. That means it can be used on a PC or a Mac computer but it's not programmed to play on a TV DVD player: the DVD is strictly and only for computer use.

In one comprehensive self-help program you get not only instructions and assistance in wire jewelry artistry but also the actual plans for easily making specialty wire working tools (some of these tools are commercially quite expensive but with easy DIY can cost only a dollar or two in ordinary hardware store items).

The extensive tutorials feature nearly 200 pages of text, at least a dozen videos and audio aids plus animations, pictures and step-by-step drawings. All in all, it represents the one instructional program that will open the door to many new and exciting wire artistry possibilities such as the following:

1. - Basic wire wrapping . . . a short summary section intended solely for individuals with no wire wrapping experience. It involves only a minimum amount of time and attention on basic skills that are really necessary to get the most out of the advanced (for a good, basic tutorial on fundamental wire wrapping, see Wykoff's Master Wire Wrapping tutorial)
2. - Vertical Coiling . . . also referred to as Egyptian and Peruvian coils and coiling, this section shows you how to assemble a few hardware store parts into a professional "Coyler" with which you can make and design customized jewelry designs featuring tight, accurate coils of ANY diameter size.
3. - Horizontal Coiling . . . also referred to as spring making, this section shows you how to make a coil (or spring) making device that will turn out colored and textured wire springs of any length and virtually any diameter. These are truly jewelry making coils - not springs - because the jewelry wire lacks compression and/or expansion qualities while still enabling such attractive motifs as coil-on-coil (where you wrap one horizontal coil around another) and stretch-out coils.
4. - Wire Sculptoring . . . with the techniques presented in this section you'll be able to make smaller jewelry sculptures or you can go massive with true sculptors using wires of diverse personality.
5. - Jigs . . . here's a section on designing a jig with which wire bending will duplicate any jig drawing you make. This is the route for true, accurate, repeatable prodution and is especially valuable for someone who performs such work for profit.
6. - Templates - designing, making and using templates represents an important variation on jigs but it's a talent by itself - and is capable of producing truly beautiful work.
7. - Wire Twisting . . . yes, most wire wrappers know how to twist a square wire for texture purposes. This section goes far beyond that: it shows yow to turn multiple wires, how to mix and twist Furthermore, you'll lear how to make a twisting tool that allows for easy twisted wire designs that are a marvel of consistency and reglarity.
8. - Ribbon Wrapping . . . this is a new trademarked jewelry making system invented by Gerald Wykoff. It can simulate both wire wrapped jewelry design and traditional mounting ideas. With Ribbon Wrapping, you can make jewelry showcasing faceted gems, cabochon cut gems, customied gems - in short, you can set ANY gemstone of any size, shape, weight or profile.

This auction offers a multi-media CD-ROM complete with text, pictures, animations that demonstrates an easy, quick way to make an inexpensive tool to do this. It's called a Blanking Tool. Such a tool is generally made of hard metal, a single hinged piece into which the design or shape's outline has been sawed out with a jeweler's piercing saw. With this tool, one can produce up to several hundred replications of the shape.

Developed by a British goldsmith named Roger Taylor, the RT Blanking Tool technique allows any person with a jeweler's saw to make the punches and dies necessary to cut through virtually any material. In this same tutorial, you'll also find instructions to make Gerald Wykoff's 2-piece variation of the single-cut blanking tool.

The major difference between the two tools is that Wykoff's tool provides for stamping out the entire shape in a single punch: the RT tool leaves a small uncut section near the hinge intersections.

It doesn't take a lot of mechanical skills to produce and use a Blanking Tool. Your biggest demand is merely sawing along the design shape you draw or scratch on the tool material. After that, you merely insert a sheet of metal, wood, plastic or paper between the punch and the die elements and apply force i.e., some kind of press or even a sharp hammer blow.

With a blanking tool, your workshop will be able to produce all kinds flat shapes including pendants, ear rings - even boxes and frames. Because of its design flexibility, a blanking tool can pretty much keep up with your imagination yet the costs will be a dollar or two per blanking tool. A tool and die maker usually starts counting at $500 and up for a tool.

If you'd like to make fine jewelry mountings for any gem regardless of shape, style, size or weight, then this new wire jewelry making program will truly provide one large leap for your creative ambitions.

Equipment can be expensive, though.

Now you can - with a lot less time, effort and money than you thought possible - enjoy the thrill of cutting gemstone cabochons on your own 4-station machine. What's more, your investment for a professional level 4-Station cabochon machine will require an investment of about $100 - not the $2,000 and up cost for a comparable commercial unit.>/font>

Look at the illustrations above. That's what is offered here - a method for you to use new, inexpensive off-the-shelf items to create a cabochon cutting machine upon which you can attach 4 separate abrasive elements for a straight-through cabochon cutting experience. In a unique multi-media CD-ROM program for the PC, you will see the secret of how to make such a machine. Every step will be presented with narrated video, animation, illustrations and complete texts. What's so exciting is the fact that you need only average mechanical ability and a minimum of tools. As a matter of fact, the conversion can be performed in a day.

The book-length tutorial program is offered in auction by Dr. Gerald Wykoff GG CSM, now retired but still well known throughout the world's gemcutting industry as a lapidary writer and researcher, author, inventor and equipment manufacturer. Just as he won patents with his faceting machine developments, Wykoff has now created a remarkable conversion of a low cost grinder into a high performing cabochon machine.

Check the prices. You can pay thousands of dollars for a commercial cabochon machine with 4 cutting stations, but Wykoff's conversion offers the same thing plus a water system, pedestal stand, lighting system -- all for approximately $100.

You should know that the plans and the promise of only $100 investment involve only the cutting machine. The wheels and abrasive materials that you elect for equipping the machine would be extra and there's no way of predicting your tastes in accessories. Jukst know that you can equip a cabochon cutter from $50 to $500 depending on the kind of wheels, disks and abrasives you choose. A sintered diamond wheel can easily cost $500 each, but silicon carbide abrasive wheels and belts - that work just as well but don't last as long - can cost only a dollar or so.

You get more than comprehensive plans to build either of two versions for a cab machine (Version 1 depends on sanding disks, while Version 2 features traditional cutting wheels and drums). The 6-chapter program shows you how to make a 4-Cabber machine - and then provides complete lessons on beginning and advanced cabochon techniques. You learn to build a machine and then how to use it.

The program won't leave you wondering where to get the items. You are provided with the sources and contacts to buy all the things you need to get into cabochon cutting.

If you're interested in looking into the exciting world of gemcutting, this program of instructions could be the key to your gem kingdom.
Plans - Cabochon 4-Machine - $25 Ea.

What this 2-for-1 multi-media CD-ROM offers is Gerald Wykoff's 1) complete set of instructions on how to cut cabochons - and then 2) includes plans and specifications that will allow you to build an improved 1-station cabochon cutting machine for less than $25. All you have to come up with, really, is a motor (if you don't want to scrounge for one - even on Ebay, the program will point you to a good source of used, refurbished motors CHEAP!), some cake pans, a few nuts and bolts and some pieces of wood. Get these together in one place, and you'll be well on your way to owning a DIY cabochon cuting machine - a real machine, too, not a toy.

What makes the contents of this CD so unique is the complete course in cabochon fashioning that's featured. You'll learn the inside techniques that separate the superior artisans from the average. For example, most self-taught cab cutters "chop" on the cutting wheels with the result that the curvatures on the cabs are not consistent. A simple, professional technique called "running the wheel," a technique developed by famed Idaho gem cutter Larry Gray, assures the symmetry of a cab top simply by properly utilizing the wheel itself.

A series of animations reveal the how and why of this amazingly simple technique that once you see how to use it, the procedure will become almost second nature. Combine that skill with the tierng technique and there will be few cabochon cutting challenges that you can resolve to your advantage.

Look, too, for some good pointers on the parallel duties of cabbing i.e., the new approach to dopping (forget wood sticks and wax because this old approach is both dirty and difficult), dop sticks from wood to steel, how to handle easy-to-use epoxy as your dopping medium of choice, double cabbing, cutting on wheel and lap edges. The list can be a bit lengthy, but all the strategies are fully described.

You'll appreciate the easy steps - presented in both pictures and text - involved in building a working cab machine. Motor and lap attachment modifications are kept to a minimum so it becomes a rather easy chore to make and assemble the machine's complementary systems into working order. Truth is, you don't need to be a verteran shop expert to make your own cabbing machine. Nor do you need a big array of tool. Plans - 1-Station Cab Machine - $25 Ea.

That's what is available with this updated full-length CD-ROM conversion from the original VHS production . . . a full length 45-minute video and sound presentation - on a CD-ROM. Just pop the disk into your CD-ROM drive and set back and watch. What's beautiful about this video is the fact that Wykoff figured out how to put such a long narrated video with sound and music onto a CD-ROM disk. Almost all full length movies are found exclusively on DVD disk. Wykoff decided to update his instructional video and do it in such a way that PC computers users could use their CD-ROM disks and thus not get involved with expensive new DVD players and software.

Note: The conversion of this video from its original analog filming to digital format resulted in a severe loss of graphic as well as sound quality. This is NOT a high quality video although the information is still valid. Therefore the Video on Faceting is one of a two- part CD-ROM offer. In addition to the CD video on faceting, you will also receive the multi-media CD-ROM on Skills in Jamb Peg Faceting thereby providing you with a complete course in jamb peg style faceting.

Still, to visit nearly an hour with one of the lapidary industry's giants, just plop the CD-ROM disk in your computer, click on the icon - and Windows Multi Media Player (version 9 highly recommended) will find the file and open it up.

What you'll see and hear in this educational experience is a techniques program designed for users of his famed Calibrated Jamb Peg. Make no mistake about it, though. There's little difference between jamb pegging and protractor faceting. The machine process is different, but the techniques and methods of faceting are virtually identical. A full 90% of the information will be on the subject - and techiques - of faceting useful to anyone who wishes to enhance their skills.

"The Video on Faceting" CD-ROM embraces all the disciplines . . . setting up, tabling, preforming, HAI (the Height-Angle-Index syndrome), CAV (centrifugal angular velocity), synchonous vs. non-synchronous faceting machines, transferrring, dopping and dopping agent use, stone removal, slinging, flying a quill, sanding, pre-polishing, a bit of faceting machine history, the triangle of faceting. As an additional bonus, you will also receive a copy of his famed FathMac computer programs, a full array of 13 faceting software utilities that Wykoff wrote in order to give faceters a better grip on the optical-physical math implications of faceting.

As warned earlier, this video is an updated version with new graphics and explanations, but essentially its heritage arises from the same video that he produced a decade ago when he was manufacturing CJPs. Every single bit of information is still contemporary and designed to advance your techniques by a quantum leap. But because it is a conversion from analog film that was damaged in Florida's Hurricane Charlie, the video suffers in picture quality and size (it's not full screen), sound and some transitions. It's far a perfect VHS-to-PC computer conversion so be prepared. If you can overlook the shortomcings, for the auction price and two bonus offers it's still a beneficial price opportunity for anyone interested in faceting.

This CD-ROM presentation will NOT work on the Mac OS. Furthermoe, if you are using a PC computer with Windows XP, you can run this program without a hitch. If, though, you are using Windows 95 or Windows 98, chances are the version of Windows Media Player on your system is not adequate so far as handling a file of this CD-ROM's size. For that reason, you'll need to download the free Media Player 9 Series from Microsoft (which you shuld really do anyway). Remember, it's the Media Player 9 series you want.
Video-Faceting - $25 Ea.

That's quite a promise, especially when you realize that a modern EDM machine costs $100,000 or more - far more than most small workshop owners care to invest even for the ability to easily produce complex metal dies and molds with which to stamp or cast metal pieces.

Of course a modern high technology EDM machine features servo mechanisism, auto feeds, etc. The small machine that is built with our plans (we call it an EDmm) is a fraction of the size of a commercial model - but it can do everything the big machines do. It's just that you operate the model shop EDmm manually with your eyes and hands (they're more reliable anyway!).

The tutorial is the result of extensive research from a number of sources and the DIY build-an-EDmm plans are right out of a mechanic's magazine. It works: I built and used mine for years and made beautiful stamping dies and molds for pennies (truth is, you can even use an electrically conducting penny coin as a tool for making a nice coin stamping die out of hard steel. It takes about 3 hours of sparking.

The key solid state electronic device for this machie is an ordinary $4 Silicon Controlled Rectifier (SCR) and if you Google that name, you'll be confronted with hundreds of suppliers). Add a couple of 200-watt light bulbs and two small other electronic devices (you're shown exactly how they're wired up) and you have a working EDM machine that will spark its way through any metal on earth.

Sparking! That's what the EDmm does (we call it the Electrical Discharging Mitey Mite). Just like it's big, expensive brother, it also harnesses sparks - the stuff of lighning - by the millions to cut into a hard steel workpiece (charged positive) an accurate cavity that's the precise shape of the tool (charged negative). With Electrical Discharge Machining, you produce a copper or brass tool into the shape or form you want, apply controlled sparking (i.e., direct current electricity) from the tool into the metal sworkpiece - and millions of sparks later you have the tool's profile neatly cut into the steel workpiece.

If it sounds easy, it is with the tiny EDmm. Furthermore, making a EDmm yourself isn't all that difficult or demanding. The plans, instructions and blowup drawings (including an electrical diagram showing the setup's simplicity) are precise and easy to understand. You won't need an electrical engineering degree to get the job done.

The parts and components can be found in the neighborhood hardware and/or electrical appliance store.
Electrical Discharge Machine - $24.50 Ea.

Gemcutting follows certain mechanical disciplines and anyone can learn them. Like most men and women, you can teach yourself to cut and polish those rigidly disciplined flat facets. Likewise, rounding a gentle shape on an opaque gemstone with blazing textures isn't all that difficult (cabochon cutting is the first level for most gemcutters), and, believe it or not, anyone who can find the edge of a cutting wheel can produce the magnificent geometrically channeled Fantasy cuts.

The key to gemcutting isn't whether you can do it or not. The key is finding instructions. This powerful, comprehensive multi-media CD-ROM program (it conveys information with video, animation, text, interaction, music and sound) covers the entire field of gemcutting. Produced by one of the lapidary industry's most renowned lapidary masters , Gerald Wykoff GG CSM, this single PC computer disk is like having the master looking over your shoulder and showing and talking to you.

Try it out with a simple wood jamb peg (the pros have been using wood jamb pegs for centuries) - but experience the ease of calibration. In short order you can be experiencing why jamb peg methods have ruled the gemcutting world for centuries.

Jamb pegging has represented the preference of the world's premium faceters for 8 centuries. This fact begs a question: if jamb pegging is so wonderful then why haven't American faceters embraced the machine? Answer: it simply took too darned long to acquire proficiency with a standard jamb peg because mastery entails guesswork when you use a stick and a backboard to form the all-important faceting triangle. Most Western faceters want quick results and willingly pay up to $5,000 for a protractor type faceting machine. For the guy or gal who'd just like to facet some highly valuable gems the investment has been too great . . . especially when they experience the monotony of attending to a delicate albeit precise piece of machinery. Try performing the new, exciting Concave Faceting with a Calibrated Jamb Peg vs. the mechanical positioning of a modern protractor machine. The difference in ease and speed is extraordinary.

Fact is, most faceters would rather cut a gemstone rather than attend machinery. With a jamb peg, your attention is directed to the stone, not setting up the equipment. It's not hard to appreciate why most American faceting machine producers are machinists by trade.

In the '80s, along came Gerald Wykoff GG CSM, who perceived that jamb peg faceting was merely an exercise in high school trigonometry. He solved the math basis for finding the proper triangle for each angle between the jamb and the peg, and consequently came up with a simple calibrated concept that automatically disciplined the complex Height-Angle-Index - so a person needed only a few hours - and no math - to learn how to use it with commercial level skills.

The result? The U. S. Patent Office extended to Wykoff's Calibrated Jamb Peg the first jamb peg patent in history. When the commercial model was introduced it immediately sold more than a thousand units at $500 each. Not one was ever sent back for refund. Now retired, Wykoff no longer produces CJPs, but he has come up with a easy-to-make jamb peg design based on his patent. It can be constructed by a person with average craft skills using a knife, some epoxies and a hammer and a few items you can buy at the local hardware or hobby store for less than $25.

This comprehensive computer program offers you more than just the legal right to make and use your own jamb peg faceting machine whether for personal or professional use (you may not produce the patented CJP for resale). It demonstrates how to make pegs with their own dedicated index wheels so you can cut in all of the symmetries. Furthermore, if you later opt to buy DIY peg kits for the CJP, the tutorial will show you ow to modify the components of your DIY machine so they can accommodate these new quickly made DIY peg kits. Indeed, you even get instructions of modifying the parts in case you wish to customize your faceting setup and this is in addition to information on how to make some of your own vital accessories that make the faceting process possible.

Keep in mind, now, that this comprehensive CD-ROM tutorial provides only plans for making a CJP unit: it does not contain jamb peg instructions or any tutorials on faceting gems. You might be able to work it out intuitively, but you'll still be far better off if you fully consider getting some of the tutorial help that's available on this website.

This multi-media CD-ROM program covers all of the techniques - and related skills, too - that make up the art and technique of jamb pegging. With a jamb peg, the outcome lies with the artisan's brain-eye-hand coordination, far more that it does with the contemporary protractor machines. With a jamb peg, when you move your hand, something controlled by you happens to the gemstone which is lashed to the end of the peg. With a protractor, what ever happens when you move your hand is involved with a complex set of mechanical controls.

That's the difference between the two techniques: you facet with your skills with a jamb peg, and you facet with the machine controls when you submit to the machine's requirements. There's a reason why the jamb peg has dominated professional colored gem faceting for centuries and it's not altogether economics. It's in the control of skills by the individual faceter. You never relinguish this control - or the feeling that you are in complete charge - as you cut a gemstone jamb peg style. No wonder it's more fun actually to jamb peg!

This CD also incorporates the entire original book-length manuscript - updated now as a computer multi-media program with video, animation, sound, music, text, illustrations. It- also includes materials and research that Wykoff had intended to have published before illness drove him into full retirment.

Here are the chapter contents of this faceting breakthrough program:

• Introduction to Jamb Pegging
• Components of a CJP
• Setting up a CJP to Facet
• Open Dopping & Transferring
• Basic CJP Techniques
• Advanced CJP Techniques
• Starters: Cutting the Round Brilliant . . .Emerald Cut
• Refining Your CJP Cutting Techiques
• Gem References
• Cut Designs

It's astonishing how much money people will spend on expensive gold and gemstone jewelry - and not have the slightest idea if they're making a good buy or not. It's usually "not." This auction offers you a strong alternative. Hold off buying another piece of gold or gemstone jewelry until you've digested this no-holds, tough, insider's tactics of "Street Smart" with its flood of factual information written by Gerald Wykoff GG CSM, a world renowned gemcutter and jewelry maker.

The greatest nightmare for any unfair retail jeweler is a savvy customer who "knows the deal" and this multi-media CD-ROM tutorial program will show you some incredible maneuvers for determining just how the pros do it and therefore much you SHOULD pay.

Here are some of the subjects that are covered:

1. How to use a handful of nickels to determine the precise weight and wholesale cost of gold jewelry items
2. How to evaluate cheap vs. expensive gold jewelry
3. How to view and determine accurately the quality of a gemstone according to the professional's gemcutters Five P's
4. What are some of the clever negotiating ploys that experienced jewelry industry veterans use to obtain the best deal and/or the best price
5. Where should a person go to get the best gold and gemstone buys
6. What you should know about the shortcomings of relying on the traditional Four C's really