A little silver before xmas

[Allen]

Early days for learning about silver.

Did two with fine silver bezel and silver backing, the others with bezel wire.

For soldering I use a hand butane torch.

















Hope to fix some of the errors with the next batch. If you have any suggestions please post them.   

[DonniesTreasures]

Can't give you any suggestions since I don't do any metal work.  However - Wow!    Awesome cabs & really nice simple settings that shows them off beautifully!  Nice work!

[Taogem]

Nothing to say exept absolutely beautiful !!

Butane torch and all ! 

[hulagrub]

Allen, GREAT!

[christopherl1234]

Looks like you did a tip top job!

[bobby1]

Some real sharp mountings and cabs! Great work!
Bob

[doxallo]

They look good! Nice and clean!

Are they actually bezel set or are they glued? Hard to tell from the photos, the bezels look very low but I don't know how angled the stones are.....

[Michael S Hoover - Redrummd]

The fit looks to be tight which is the toughest aspect....

[Taogem]

The fit looks to be tight which is the toughest aspect....

Exactly... That stood out for me too.. Excellent fitting !

[Bentiron]

Those look really good from this angle, how about a little shot from the side. Butane torches work fine on small pendents like these, so who needs any thing bigger for a torch?

[Allen]

When cutting the stones I do the base first putting on a small bevel on the bottom then about  20 degrees on the top sides for the bezel setting (maybe a little more for bezel wire wouldn't go astray)

Bezel wire hasn't got a lot of height to push over.

With a couple the wire was a little loose at the start but with use of a burnisher and some serious effort that slackness was taken up.

I did have trouble with the top stone on the sharp corners. The material is fine silver. I did lower the corners a little. Is there any secret (or good practice) in getting those corners in tight?

[ScarlettoSara]

Even more beautiful than they were as cabs Allen:)

[doxallo]

set the corners FIRST always. push directly in ON the corner point. sounds counter intuitive, but when you go back and do the edges of the corner, it all works out. the other option is to cut a slit at the corner. some people do that, I tend to dislike that technique.

[christopherl1234]

I found this prior post about doing corners.

http://gemstone.smfforfree4.com/index.php/topic,1738.msg10827.html#msg10827

[Allen]

Thanks Janice & Christopher.

That post of Bobby's is really informative.

[rocknroll]

  inspired...those are amazing !!   

[39don]

Outstanding cabs and silver work Allen......I don't see any with a problem......Nice