Hello there

[Emza]

Hi everyone,

I'm Emma, and I've been lurking here for a few months now picking up tips from all you knowledgeable people, and getting familiar with the forum.

I've been interested in jewellery for as long as I can remember, and tentatively started bashing some brass a couple of years ago. I'll always remember the thrill of finding I could make dents in metal :D I took an evening course in jewellery making at the jewellery school in Birmingham (taught by Carlton), which was wonderful, and since then, I've carried on noodling at home. I'd like to do the stone setting course at the jewellery school sometime soon.

I love Cooksons - so efficient - but wish they did more silver settings. I'm scared to use gold ones since I melted the prongs on one perfectly nice 6mm claw thingy.

At the moment I'm ... well, wishing the price of silver and gold wasn't so high, and melting the contents of my jewellery box. It's thrilling to make little silver balls out of scrap bits, isn't it? If only I knew how to fuse them. :o

Anyway, it's been lovely to eavesdrop on this forum, and I'm looking forward to contributing more* from now on.

Emma

* = begging for help

[Dennis]

Hi Emma,
You talked about silver settings for stones. It is really better to make your own because for silver they have to be quite strong. If as a starting point you make a rub over setting for a round stone cutting your own 0.5 mm fine silver strip, you can then make say five notches leaving you with five strong claws to rub over.

When mentioning the fusing of silver balls I think you are referring to granulation, which is mounting them in a pattern on a background. All these things can be learned from a book and I can recommend “The Workbench Guide to Jewellery Techniques”, by Anastasia Young, which is not intimidating, but covers a huge range of subjects. Amazon have it for £14.32 just now.

Regards, Dennis.

[snow_imp]

Hi Emma, glad you felt ready to join in, welcome.

[Emza]

Hi Emma,
You talked about silver settings for stones. It is really better to make your own because for silver they have to be quite strong. If as a starting point you make a rub over setting for a round stone cutting your own 0.5 mm fine silver strip, you can then make say five notches leaving you with five strong claws to rub over.



Hello Dennis, and thank you for the welcome.

I would like to give that technique a go - do you have any pictures (or links to pictures) of a finished setting made this way? I can't picture what kind of notches to cut.

Many thanks,
Emma

Thank you too to Anne :). I realise since I posted that I actually joined the forum in November 2009, and have kept mum since then.

[Dennis]

Sorry Emma I could only find this rather grotty old print to scan in for you, but it was a starting point for me, on this amethyst navette, Dennis.

[Emza]

Dear Dennis, thank you so much for taking the trouble to scan and post that. A very pretty ring indeed. Sorry to keep bothering you about it, but do you cut the notches once the strip is soldered to the base, or before? Is fine silver ok, or would sterling be better? Finally, is there anything concealed within that setting to support the stone where it tapers? I've only had one go at setting a faceted stone in a bezel setting, and put a smaller ring of silver inside for the stone to sit on (it still wobbled about quite a bit when I was trying to actually set it).

Emma

[Dennis]

Hi Emma,
I looked up my ’98 notes for this. The bezel was made from 0.7 sterling silver, but now I might omit the lower notches and use textured fine silver. The notches were cut and filed before soldering to the base.

As it is a tapering collet the stone would be supported without a bearer, but you have to cut shallow grooves inside the claws with a saw and then a file so as to allow them to be pushed down.

My notes say that the bezel was made from curved strip using our microwave turntable, which had a diameter of 34 cm. For a low-tech method you can try this with card or stiff paper first and correct it with scissors before pasting it onto silver with Pritt stick as a template. Dennis.