Profession jewellery polisher

Jewellery polishers ensure that finished jewellery pieces are cleaned by customer demand or prepared for sale. They may also perform minor repairs. They use either hand tools such as files and emery paper buff sticks and/or hand held polishing machines. They also use mechanised polishing machines such as barrel polishers. 

Personality Type

• Realistic / Artistic

Knowledge

• Buffing motions

  The different processes, or motions, used in polishing, depending on the desired end result concerning the level of smoothness and shininess of the metal workpiece: cut motion or colour motion.

• Jewellery processes

  Materials and processes involved in creating jewellery items like earrings, necklaces, rings, brackets, etc.

• Gemstones

  Types of minerals or petrified materials that are cut and polished for use in jewellery, classified according to type, characteristics, and value.

Skills

• Grind gemstones

  Shape gemstones using equipment such as diamond or silicon carbide wheels to obtain a rough though more regular form called the preform.

• Polish gemstones

  Use polishing agents or fine grades of diamonds to remove small amounts of stone in order to get a shiny surface that will improve light refraction or reflection.

• Ensure conformance to jewel design specifications

  Examine finished jewellery products to ensure that they meet quality standards and design specifications. Use magnifying glasses, polariscopes or other optical instruments.

• Use jewellery equipment

  Handle, modify, or repair jewellery-making equipment such as jigs, fixtures, and hand tools such as scrapers, cutters, gougers, and shapers.

• Clean jewellery pieces

  Clean and polish metal items and pieces of jewellery; handle mechanical jewellery-making tools such as polishing wheels.

• Sand gemstones

  Use abrasives to remove scratches and irregularities on gemstones. The abrasives used for this process are finer than the ones used for grinding gemstones. The sanding process is used to create flat surfaces on a stone, such as facets, is called lapping.

Optional knowledge and skills

Source: Sisyphus ODB