I was watching some of Soham Harrison's videos and I saw he had a very nice tool for doing tube mounting of stones at the end of this video. It is a little set of polished cups that you just whiz around the top of the mount to burnish it over. Has anyone seen these for sale anywhere? I couldn't find one on the cooksons website, (or any web site for that matter, but i may not have the right search term). I have often thought about making something of that sort but if I can but one off the shelf, all the better.
I have one like that, dont use it very much though. My opinion for what its worth is that you have to have a very steady hand and make sure that the punch is the right size. In theory it sounds good, but its quite difficult to keep the tool over the stone because the stone doesnt stick up much, so you end up rubbing the stone as well. I have gone back to using a ground down screwdriver instead.
I think that they were originally meant for claw setting. For bezel setting, you have to press incredibly hard to get the collet to close even a little, unles it is a very small one.
Having bought it, I do now use it regularly to perfect the roundness of my finished settings by rocking and rotating. This deals with the sometimes lumpy look, when your collet ends up not very round. Two cautions though:
1. If you use one which is slightly too large, you end up making nasty score marks in your surrounding metal.
2. They can work for both faceted and cabochon stones, as mine do. However some, which come in boxed sets with lids, are so shallow, that they will not reach the bezel of cabochons at all, only faceted stones which are flatter, so halving their usefulness.
Here is a picture of mine for reference. Not having a lid means it tends to get knocked over an spill out. That's the penalty of having a better set. Dennis.
Can I ask where you found those Dennis? I've been looking for a deeper set that will handle cabs as well for ages - edit - just found them at Euro
I use mine all the time. I don't push and rock, I just tap gently with a mallet, which seems to work for me. These are 3mm emeralds in 9ct, and took approximately 10 seconds to set using this technique. I set them rather deeper than usual as I was keeping them for myself and I'd managed to chip a previous pair that had been conventionally set. I find using any sort of pusher more difficult with smaller stones, perhaps because I don't have great sensation in my fingertips.
I have a set of them that I bought at auction with 10s of thousands of Czech paste stones. I thought they were for closing the claw settings that came with some of those, hadn't thought they could be used for tube settings. That's good to know, is there not a danger of scratching the stones using one of those, that would be my worry?
Sorry have just seen Dennis's post which makes mine seem irrelevant mine are single tools
Bookmarks