Help with Bezel Setting
Q.Has anyone on this newsgroup come across a setting like this one ?? I have set a few of these with horrible results, (well not horrible, but rather not good). Can someone give me some information on the proper way to set the stones in this ring. My main problem seems to be where the end stones meet the center. I can drill the seats perfectly, but when it comes to moving the gold around the stone, that's where I have some problems. I have a hammer handpiece for the foredom, but it doesn't do the trick, on account the bezel is so thick.
A.The stones in this piece are flush set, a whole different problem. I have never tried to flush set a cabachon, but your diamond has the same ragged edge, so I can offer a little advice. After you have carved your seat, do you pre-polish before you hammer set? If not, that will help quite a bit. If you are pre-polishing and still have such ragged metal, then you need to carve your seat more carefully, you are hammering too much and deforming the metal. The stone should fit very snug-ly in the seat. As you are carving the seat with the hart burr, when you get the opening so the stone almost but not quite drops down and snaps in place, carve with the hart burr a little more deeply on one side, and use a bud burr to oval the hole from the top (just lean the burr ever so slightly in the opposite dirrection from the side you just carved deeper with the hart burr) so that the stone can kind of angle in to it's seat. Make the edges clean and neat before you slide the stone into place. Then hammer the side that you widened with the bud burr. This will set the stone and make the slightly oval opening round again if you do it right! It takes very little hammering, really. Then just a bit of emery to take off the hammer dents, and maybe run around the edge of the opening with a knife or flat graver for a bit of a bright cut, and you are ready to polish. But the cabachon is something I can't help you with. You have chosen quite a difficult setting job here, with the convex surface of the pendant(?) and a large flush set cab. I have seen a piece similar to this where the cab had been grooved by a lapidary so the metal had a place to grab hold and not so much metal needs to be hammered over to set the stone. It was undetectable until we unset the piece to melt for old gold. As far as cleaning up these settings, I would use a cylinder burr around the edge to clean up the rough spots, and then a graver to make a bright cut.
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