Jewelry School Part 3

As everyone groggily strolled in the next morning we took to our benches. I looked at my chain repairs from the next day to see if I had applied what I had learned correctly. Everything was fine. Blaine called us over and told us that we were doing so well as a group we were going to begin the three stone ring.

To me this seemed like a daunting task but when laid out its not too difficult. Blaine showed us, in great detail, how to cut a hole through each on the three parts of the top gallery of the ring. Each had four prongs and one was bigger than the other two. He drilled through and flattened each one. Next, using a special clay and some other techniques he made the bottoms of the settings match up. Doing this without the clay, is probably the most frustrating thing ever, or so I have heard. After the settings were attached we soldered them together. Mine came out better than I thought it would but there was more to be done.

The next step was making the ring shank. We cut a simple shank into a different shape and put a throat so that the bottom and top galleries would touch the corresponding parts of the ring. This may sound confusing but I'm sure you've seen what it's supposed to look like. I had a little trouble cutting it straight at first. Once I figured out the proper technique I measured and cut where the throat would be on each side. This was going fine until I broke the piece that would touch the bottom gallery off. This got me a little mad and I had to make it all over again.

Meanwhile, Blaine brought us up for another demo of how to solder the top gallery to the shank. This was a lot easier than anyone thought it could be, as long as you followed the tips and tricks that he showed and had good torch control, which at that point we all did. For some people this took longer to accomplish than others. I did it slowly for fear of messing up again. In the end it looked OK and I was proud of it. I didn't think I had it in me.

That night I relaxed with a quiet dinner and a few of us had some drinks by the pool. It was low key that night and we all drifted off on our own time up to our respective rooms.