Slowly, but surely: my labradorite ring

It was only a week ago that I started on my ring having been shown how to make a rub over stone setting. I thought once the bezel setting was done, everything else would fall into place. If only it were that easy!

The soldered bezel setting

It seemed simple enough, even if it is somewhat fidgety to work with, but once I got the setting soldered, it was a matter of sawing off the extra bits and filing the base till it meets the bezel strip part of the cup. One thing I hadn’t considered before I bought the round silver wire for the ring shank though was I’d need a flat surface on one side to allow it to be soldered to the base of the bezel cup. So I managed to get this done earlier in the week.

The soldered, cut and filed cup/bezel and the filed ring shank

The trick of it was trying to have the flat filed surface of the ring shank balanced on the upside down bezel cup, so the shank is soldered to the base of the bezel cup. Maybe it’s because of the weight of the ring or the way it’s been filed, but it wasn’t sitting nicely for me to solder. So I had to use a third hand base with reverse action tweezers to hold onto the ring shank while this was soldered. It wasn’t as easy as I thought because the filed side of the ring shank didn’t sit flush against the base of the bezel cup. The force of the flame from the torch then meant once it was soldered, the bezel cup was slightly off kilter on the ring shank.

I had to fire off the solder (well, my instructor helped because I struggled with this) so the bezel cup and ring shank were separated so I can start again next week. I wanted to do it at home, but I’d really need hard solder and a third hand tweezer base to do this. I’ve also got custom order pieces to make for some friends as well so this can be etched at my next class. The fun of creating something of your own, eh?