I’ve been working diligently the last month to create an awesome body of work that is called The Spirit Bear Collection. It challenged me in so many ways, from making tiny bezels for 6mm stones to setting square stones, soldering multiple layers of metal together and cutting out tiny stampings with my jeweler’s saw. I learned so much, solving problems as they arose. I wanted to share two of my problem solving solutions with you…
First, I had a bunch of stones that needed to be set in bezels, but the walls of the bezel cups were too high for my tiny 5mm stones. I had a few options. I could sand or file them, but that would take forever. I had read of all kinds of interesting ways to lift the stone from using sawdust to adding a piece of scrap silver under the stone. The idea of putting sawdust in a bezel cup sounds disgusting to me. What if it gets wet and molds? Scrap silver is precious, and I didn’t want the added weight since these stones were going on some large hoops. So, I decided to get inventive with a cottage cheese lid. Here comes the funny part…
I couldn’t find my paper punch, and cutting tiny circles out of a plastic lid with a pair of scissors is no fun, so I pulled out my disc cutter, found a size in the disc cutter that would be slightly smaller than the bezel, slid the cottage cheese lid into the sucker and gave the punch a gentle tap. Perfection!
You can see the little plastic discs in the silver bezel cups. I tried this with a larger stone and found that the plastic moves with the metal and it left a crease in my bezel, so I wouldn’t recommend this work around on a larger stone. Also, you must remember to take the discs out of the bezel cups/settings before soldering! The thought of melting plastic is just too much to bear - no pun intended (you know, The Spirit Bear Collection - lol!).
Usually, finishing the bezel edges after the stone is set is a breeze with a pumice wheel in my flex shaft or dremel. However, I started using a new tumbling medium that gives oxidized silver a lovely matte shimmer. But if you know anything about setting stones, there is always some clean up because the bezel pusher and/or burnisher leave a shine to the walls of the bezel. And if you are new to bezel setting, you inevitably slip and leave a scratch in some unwanted place. With this great new finish, it’s really hard to clean up those little scars.
That’s where this little piece of denim I had on my bench (from polishing wax carvings) comes in. I cut a small hole in it, just big enough for the setting to pop through. It was amazing! No longer did I have to be really careful about touching the surrounding metal and messing up the finish.
Oh, the tumbling medium I am using is from Jessica Jordan Cote @rosyrevolver. It’s called Hone and Highlight. You can find it on her website here. She recommends tumbling for 12 hours. The earring you see here was tumbled for four hours. If you tumble for longer, you get less of a shimmery finish.