Burnishing creates a pleasing glossy finish on other finished projects. This adds a lustrous shine resulting in a professional, polished look on the piece. Hand burnishing produces a highly reflective finish by using a variety of specialized tools to compress and flatten the surface of the precious metal.

Each stroke, which involves a tool pressing against the surface of the piece, creates a bright streak. The trick is to layer or overlap each streak to form a continuous bright surface over the desired area. If an even finer, longer-lasting surface is needed, the piece can be burnished again perpendicular to the original stroke. While time consuming and labor intensive, hand burnishing does not remove any of the precious metal from the jewelry and can produce a very striking effect.

A burnishing tool is a device used to create a polished or textured finish on the surface of an object. Used in both art and manufacturing, different types of burnishing tool can be applied to metal, wood, or ceramic materials. Burnishing an object can both improve the properties of the material or alter its appearance depending on application.

Use your burnishers to de-bur the end of your jewelry wire after it has been cut or to smooth bezels around stones and gems. Just a couple of twists are all it takes to put those small, but oh-so-crucial adjustments on your wire-jewelry masterpiece.

Let’s take a look at a few of the burnishers we carry and their