After all the polishing, it was time to drill some holes into the ring to put gems into it.
First we did some practice, as this was apparently a technique that Russ hadn’t done before (and obviously, neither had I!). It’s called a “star setting”, and it involves “bending” the metal in the corners of the gem over the gem so that it holds it in.
We started by drilling a hole smaller than the gem, so that it had a place to sit. Then we used a hart burr to create an angled shelf. Place the gem in the hole. Then use a graver to “dig” into the metal and effectively knife into it, and press up to take that little sliver of metal you’ve gouged out with the graver and bend it over the gem. Repeat 4 times for each gem to hold the corners on. He has another tool he uses to turn the sliver of metal into a little bead so it looks nice.
Here are some photos of the practice.
After some practice, it was time to do it for real. Russ did all of this, possibly because a failure at this point would mean going back to the entire beginning, and it was fiddly work. 🙂
Our original design had 4 gems, but at the end of this process I hadn’t given Russ enough space to set 4 gems, so we went with 2 of them. And here it is!
It looks odd because it’s been designed to nestle into the existing engagement ring, and it looks amazing when put together!
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