A South Sea Bauble.

[Nick martin]

Thanks for that Dennis, I think I follow you. The glue part, is it on the underside of the cup / dome as per this?

Nick

[Dennis]

Yes, the under part of the cup and down the hole. There is frequently some air trapped too, even though you insert the glue carefully with a pin, or a saw blade. As you can imagine, this causes the prong to come out again while the glue is still soft.

My remedy is to use rapid setting glue and then to hold the parts together for five minutes, or so. You can also make the hole wider, to give the air an easier escape route.
Dennis.

[Nick martin]

Thanks Dennis. I've no plans to make any jewellery using pearls at present but its useful to know the setting method used in your piece. Looks tremendous.

Nick

[pearlescence]

The sneaky but effective trick we use is we use an earring pearl cup as the setting even when making a ring (when we want a cup style setting obviously)....drill a 1mm hole into a ring, make a bit of a countersink on the outside and then drop an earring finding into the hole. Solder then trim the excess and finish.
(And I've switched to gel superglue for pearl setting after some problems with epoxy.

[pearlescence]

By the way Dennis, as a PS, I showed your photos on a dedicated pearl blog and everyone loved your work.