March Meet The Maker - Making…

This March Meet the Maker post is where I teach you all how to stone set over the internet in 30 seconds!!

Ok, it’s not really. Stone setting “theory” is something that actually isn’t all that hard to learn, but doing it well, so that your stone is in straight and secure takes many many hours of practice, and lots of broken stones!

It’s all about incredibly tiny tolerances. The metal that’s holding the stone in place, whether a flush, bezel, claw or any other type of setting needs to be touching the stone in order to hold it securely, and in order to know exactly how hard you need to push on that metal, you need to know how much is too hard, and then take a teeny tiny step back. In order to do this with confidence, you need to break stones. This is why when couples come to me to make their wedding or engagement rings, I always do any stone setting, as you just can’t know how much pressure you can put onto the metal when you’ve never done it before.

So, I’ll attempt to explain the process in just a few words…

When I set a stone, especially one thats not round, the first thing that needs to be done is to make the actual setting. As I guess every goldsmith will, I’ve kind of developed my own way based on the theory. Not every stone is suited to it, but when I can, I like to make a kind of hybrid upside down claw setting. This means that the stone is surrounded by metal, like a bezel, but that theres still spaces underneath for the light to get in.

Once I’ve made this, it’s time to work on it with tiny burrs and sometimes gravers to cut the “seat” for the stone. It’s really important that this is straight all the way around otherwise the stone will be wonky in its setting.

After this, I file it to make sure the sides of the setting are the perfect height, before carefully (often with the help of a bit of blu-tac) putting the stone into it’s little home.

Then comes the scary part…pushing the metal over the stone…and these days I use a combination of hand “pushers” and my trusty hammer hand piece, in a micromotor. Each type of stone has different properties, some are very hard but brittle and some are soft and scratch really easily, which is why this has taken years of practice! Theres then a bit of work to do with a burnisher and gravers to give the inside edges of the setting a “bright cut” finish.

Right, I’ve given away enough secrets for one blog post. Hopefully it all makes some kind of sense!