Some designs to come

Here are two projects I've been working on. I carved them in wax and received the castings back this week. These are my finished silver models. The ring with faux granulation will have approximately 25 stones set in it when finished. The other ring I am going to make a few variations on once cast.

Finished platinum ring

Sorry about the delay in posting this picture, I just haven't gotten the chance to post them yet. The center stone is a 1 carat yellow sapphire and the sides are two 1/3 carat moissanites. I hope you enjoy the photos...the ring looks very nice in person.

New line

I'm in the process of developing a new line. I just finished up the master models for two new pieces and they are currently in the tumbler. Once I get them out I'll post some preliminary pictures.

Final platinum ring

Here is the completed platinum ring. I attached my hand fabricated platinum head to a 18k yellow gold shank. There are 26 solder joints in this one ring! We ran out of time to set the stones, but I will do that when I return home after Thanksgiving. I have a yellow sapphire for the center...which I think will look fantastic with the royal yellow gold.

Thanks for reading about my progress in class!

Setting complete

So we finished soldering up the setting today. This trellis has over 20 solder joints and all within a tiny, tight, little area.

Tomorrow morning I will put the setting in the magnetic tumbler to get an all around finish, and from there hand polish the setting.

Then tomorrow afternoon we are going to solder the head onto our shanks. Mine is 18k gold, and I'm hoping it will be very pretty with the yellow sapphire. I included one picture of the setting in process and still in the fixturing compound.

applying the "trumpet" prongs

Today we filed and soldered together the 3 jump rings in the proper placement using super glue and a special compound. We then fabricated the "trumpet" u-prongs and super glued them in place once they were properly placed. From there we put everything back in the compound and soldered. I have included a picture of the two trumpets soldered on.

Tomorrow we are adding the over lapping trumpet and the side mini u- prongs. Then we will attach to the shank on Thursday.

platinum ring

For my platinum ring I got a center yellow sapphire stone and two moissanites for the sides. We started by making the jump ring for the top gallery wire. We then soldered them together with a neat method that Blaine thought up to keep the solder in place.

We then rounded out the rings and layed out the prong placement. We then used a 8/0 saw blade to notch the layout. It is very important to check that the layout is on target with the correct template. We then used an end joint file to file the notches to the correct width and depth. After everything is lined up and the proper depth we curved the bottom of the jump ring to make room for the u-shaped prong.

Sorry I have no pictures, but there isn't much to show at this point.

Look for some photos tomorrow

flush set trillion

Here is my attempt at a flush set trillion. I custom cut into the metal and shaped the bearing with gravers. This is a very crude first attempt, but I'm hoping to improve over time. Blaine said this is an extremely complicated setting and will take time to perfect.

polished cut card prong settings

I polished up the cut card settings. There is still no bail, but I will fabricate that once I get home.

Redo of the pave

Today I redid our pave setting...we all got to pick out a project we wanted to redo and we got to work on it on our own time. The first picture is of my first pave and my most recent so you can get an idea of the progress.

I'm not sure if the pictures give a good idea of the differences, but they are visible in person.

Cut card prong settings

Here of pictures of the settings I made over the weekend. I haven't set the stones...and I'm pretty sure I'm going to get some different stones for these, but at least you'll have an idea. I am planning on making them both pendants, so I still need to fabricate a bail as well. I still have to polish and clean these up too, so please ignore the discoloration.

Wax and this weekend

The past two days we have worked on lathe turning to create round bezels and ring shanks. We also started carving the rest of our pear rings....shaping them up, hollowing them out, and detailing.

This weekend I will be taking a weekend class at Metalwerx on Cut Card prong settings with John Cogswell. I am very excited about visiting a new studio and I hope the class with be very informative. Cut card prong settings are built on a similar principle as tiffany settings, but this class takes them a step further with various embellishments and so forth.

I will have new pictures up on Monday so look out for them.

Wax day two

Today we worked on making a ring with a bezel for a pear shaped faceted stone. The tricks Kate has for laying out a ring like this are incredible...the whole process moved along much faster than most wax classes I've taken before. Not to mention the results are much better also. I only have one very grainy photo. I am working on the ring two ways: one with the pear vertical and one horizontal. Here is a picture of the ring blank with the bezel shaped up and the seat cut.

Tomorrow we are doing lathe turning for a round bezel and a ring.

Wax carving

We started wax carving today with Kate Wolf. We worked on carving a bezel for a pear shaped stone. We utilized drill presses and many of the tools Kate has created herself. We then smoothed the surface and embellished with any design we wanted. Tomorrow we are going to hollow out the back.

I think that we will also start on carving a bezel for a faceted pear shaped stone tomorrow. I'm really excited for Wednesday though...we are going to do lathe turning! I'm not really sure what that will entail, but I'm sure we will create a lot of interesting things.

The waxes are very delicate so I didn't bring any to photograph, but maybe I will later on in the week.

Engraving day 5

Today we worked on putting the cat claws and other cuts we learned into scrolls. I was having some problems with my onglette engraver at first, so that's why the first two scrolls have some problems on their spine.

I was able to fix that and made the final scrolls bursting out of the flower.

The type of scrolls we were doing were bright cut western style engraving...at least I believe that's what it's called.

All of the work done this week has been very tiny, so don't let the photos deceive you. Most items were probably 6mm-8mm at their largest and 1mm at their smallest.

Teacher's practice plate

Our teacher was gracious enough to give us each one of the practice plates that he did demos on in class. There are a few scrolls and flowers. Very very cool to have!

Engraving day 4, part 2

These are most of my first flowers...the exception is the flower near the snow flake. That was the onglette cut, line drawing flower.

Engraving day 4

Today we worked on bright cutting flowers. There is also one flower that I cut with an onglette to give it a more line drawing feel. It's pretty clear which flowers were my first...especially since I had the lines for the general shape in the wrong place. We also worked on a bright cut to add to the cat claw cut...this will be instrumental to the scrolls we will be working on tomorrow.