Skip to main content

My Latest Silver Jewellery Class Project - Bezel Setting


Oh my goodness I was so excited when we finally got round to bezel setting at my Tuesday night silver jewellery course! It was really the reason I enrolled on the course and a technique I've been wanting to learn ever since I started making more metalwork style jewellery. I even bought some copper bezel wire from an Etsy seller several months ago with the idea of teaching myself. I thought about it then chickened out, reasoning that it looked quite technical and precise and I'd probably fair better being shown by a teacher!

First we had to choose a stone. Alison the jewellery teacher was going to order them from Kernowcraft so after deliberating for a long time at home (I'm good at that) I choose a pretty 10mm round prehnite cab. When she came to order it at the class they were out of stock (course they were!) so I chose kyanite instead as the blue colour looked lovely.



I made the ring band with D shaped silver wire then came the fiddliness that is measuring and cutting the bezel wire. I found it really very fiddly and was worried that I'd do it wrong/get the size wrong, etc, etc. Then there's the fiddling about making sure the ends are square and meet perfectly. I got there in the end and managed to solder the bezel without melting it. Yay! Alison's way of doing it was to solder the bezel closed and to the backing piece of silver in one go. I decided not to do it this way as I wasn't confident enough that the bezel was the exact right size and if it wasn't then I'd have to start again. None of the jewellery books/ tutorials I've seen for bezel setting do it that way either, it's always solder the bezel closed, check the fit then solder to the back piece.

My bezel was a little small so I stretched it gently, checked the fit again and soldered it to the back piece of silver sheet. After trimming the sheet and filing and sanding I was ready to solder the bezel to the ring. I had a bit of a problem as the ring kept falling over as I moved the flame near it to solder it to the bezel. Really infuriating and we didn't have a third hand to use so Alison had to help by holding the ring in position! My hand isn't steady enough and I find having to concentrate on holding something perfectly still and be aware of what the other hand is doing with the torch tends to make me a bit twitchy and likely to panic slightly and probably melt something! But we got there in the end. After some more filing, sanding and polishing I was finally ready to set the stone. That went quite smoothly until I slipped with the bezel pusher and scratched the stone. It's so easy to do but thankfully the kyanite has a fairly rough texture due to it's inclusions so the scratch wasn't that obvious. Me being a bit short-sighted helps here too!
I haven't taken the ring off since I finished it so the silver is a bit scratched now but I do love it. You can see the scratch in the above photo at roughly 5 o'clock on the stone. 

I found the whole process really time-consuming and fiddly but the end result is definitely worth it and I WILL get better at it, really I will.
•♥•





•♥• My precious •♥•
Labels:

Comments

  1. Orion DesignsFriday, February 22, 2013

    It's lovely! Congratulations on completing your first bezel set stone. I dream of taking a similar class sometime.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Fanciful PonderingsFriday, February 22, 2013

    It is indeed precious, lovely work!

    ReplyDelete
  3. DETDETWednesday, March 20, 2013

    That bezel setting jewellery is really gorgeous. You surely deserve a high score on that bespoke jewellery project.

    ReplyDelete
  4. JadeThursday, March 06, 2014

    I am sure that you will have received top marks for this ring its simple and elegant.
    A great choice of stone blue and silver always look great together you must feel proud of your jewellery making its lovely

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Your comments and questions are very welcome!
If you would prefer to contact me directly please use the contact form on my "get in touch" page.
Any comments containing links will be deleted so please don't waste your time.....

Popular posts from this blog

Combining Soldering And Enamel

The need to make cute, brightly coloured enamel studs propelled me into the world of combining soldering with enamel a couple of years ago. I knew from reading up on it that it was possible to enamel and solder on the same piece but wasn't too confident I was able to do it back then. It was a slightly embarrassing occurance that made me just get on with - I'd made some enamel studs with glued on stud posts. I'd used 2 part epoxy resin which was a job in itself as it set hard after 5 minutes so I had to keep mixing more up. The finished studs looked ok but that little voice in my head kept asking "are you sure you want to use glue?" I wasn't but didn't think I had any other way to do it so I used glue. I sold my first pair and merrily sent them on their way to Canada. A couple of week later the buyer got in touch to say the stud post had come off one of the earrings and the other was hanging off. I was mortified, apologized profusely and refunded her m...
32 comments
Read more

Amazing Enamel Effects

Buying a kiln recently has given me the chance to experiment with enamelling on larger pieces of copper and to produce some really cool effects. These effects happen when you combine different types of enamel. I usually use smaller flat pieces of copper for making enamelled earrings and have had some of these effects happen when firing with a torch but they are much more obvious when you use larger pieces. I made a few practice pieces which you can see in the photos below. This was flux {a transparent enamel not to be confused with soldering flux!} applied straight onto copper and fired until the copper was a bright golden colour. Then I added a layer of liquid enamel in green and red over the flux and fired again.  The lines and spots form when the enamel becomes hot enough to start moving and in this case the transparent pushes through the liquid enamel layer forming these cool lines and spots. The effect is better in the green liquid enamel than the red.  N...
31 comments
Read more

Embossing Metal With My Sizzix Bigshot

I must admit up until a few weeks ago I was vaguely familiar with the name Sizzix but as to what you actually did with a "Sizzix" I was completely in the dark! That was until I stumbled across a video from Vintaj showing how you could use their embossing folders with a Bigshot to create designs on metal ("metal" - my favourite word after chocolate!) I was really impressed and itching to have a go, I just needed a Bigshot........ I waited a few weeks then when the urge to possess one overcame me I went out debit card at the ready..............and the shop had sold out! So I trundled off to The Range on the off chance and came home clutching my own surprisingly heavy pink and black wonder machine. It sat on the dining room table for a couple of days while I waited for the embossing folders I'd ordered online to arrive then the time came to start playing! I started with some pre-cut 24g copper hearts and the Wildflower Vines and the Butterfly Swirls Deco ...
26 comments
Read more