Jewelry School Part 4

The next mornings after breakfast the lot of us packed into cars and were off to class. Once there, some people set out to finish the three stone ring from the day before while others used the variety of flex shaft accessories to refine their work. This took up a decent amount of the morning. My ring had a lot of copper oxides coming through because I had heated it for too long. I was lucky, at one junction, not to undo my other solder joints or melt it entirely. Lucky we were using hard gold solder. I was just getting to clean my piece in the acid bath when Blaine had us come up front for another demo.

The typical chair race ensued and we each took our respective spots that we had since Monday. Today's lesson would be how to set stones. I had never done this before and using the flex shaft with certain burs to cut the prongs out was new to me. Blaine, of course, made it look easy. He gave us some heads to practice on and I was surprised when I cut my first seat to find that it looked OK. The second or third was not nearly as nice, beginners luck I guess. The trick was to angle the bur so that the stone would sit evenly at each of the four cut marks. Easier said than done, I'm afraid.

After a little practice I began to get the hang of it and now it was time to set the synthetic rubies that were handed out. The seats I cut this time were less than perfect but sufficed. I put my stone in and it fit, although it rattled around in the setting a bit. This was remedied by the technique we were shown. After a little manipulation of the prongs my stone never moved again. It was just about level too, I think I cut one of the seats out a little much; for a first effort it was good enough. To end the day Blaine had us do a couple of ring sizings, both up and down, to make sure we hadn't lost anything. In fact we all got better at this task. The class had apparently done its job.

The day ended as each one began; everyone packed into the car they had come with and we drove back to the hotel. It was a low key night and we met in the lobby bar, right in the lobby, to see if anything was going on. People were tired and after a couple drinks people didn't feel like going out that night. I was tired as well and decided it would be best just to have some dinner and relax for the night.