hello, i’m just starting to experiment with flush setting faceted
stones. i have been working with 18 gauge sterling bands and that
doesn’t seem to be quite thick enough. i was wondering what a more
appropriate gauge would be - i would like to set stones up to 3 mm
in size.
any tips would be most appreciated!
i'm just starting to experiment with flush setting faceted stones. i have been working with 18 gauge sterling bands and that doesn't seem to be quite thick enough. i was wondering what a more appropriate gauge would be - i would like to set stones up to 3 mm in size.
If you’re flush setting stones into rings, the minimum thickness of
the metal should be slightly more than the total depth of the stone,
so that after it’s set, the culet of the stone is still at least
slightly recessed relative to the interior surface of the ring.
Otherwise the rings wearer will find it quite uncomfortabole. Beyond
that, it depends on the size of the stones, and the girdle
thickness, as well as your setting technique. I’d have no trouble,
for example, flush setting.01 carat diamonds (about 1.25 mm across)
into 18 guage metal, at least in terms of setting them well. But I’d
want a little thicker for a ring, for the reasons described. 3mm
stones will need more…
Done accurately, flush setting does not thin the metal around the
stone, so you can retain the full thickness of the sheet next to the
stone. And for small stones, it’s usually best to end up with the
table of the stone pretty much level with the metal surface. So the
total depth of the stone is, at least for me, the defining
measurement. I usually add about 2 tenths of a millimeter to the
stones depth to get a guage measurement (in millimeters, not a BS
guage…)
If the item is not a ring, where the back surface of the metal rides
against skin, then you can go thinner. Small diamonds can get flush
set into metal as thin as.75 mm without too much trouble, and with
care, even thinner. The thinner the metal, the more careful you have
to be not just with setting, but also picking stones with a thin
enough girdle.
cheers
Peter
the stones depth not taqble size dictates the depth of metal you
choose. Consider machine cut stones as opposed to hand cut for
consistent pavillion to culet depth and perhaps buy some cz’s to
practice cutting your seats with instead of using the actual stones
and precious metal that will eventually be used for x ring… I think
as a vast generalization using 14 g will suffice for most 3mm round
brilliants…but consider buying some inexpensive domed sterling
rings and use them for practice. that extra depth at the apex
provides plenty of metal to remove in drilling wiht your 45 degree
hart bur and then cutting your seat…Still hesitant- the best advice
I can give you is to invest in an ALLset master system from
Foredom…It assists you in making perfect flush settings, channels,
azures etc. every time in addition to cutting perfect prongs and many
more functions as well…and you weill never regret the investment or
the time saved…not to mention the resale value is great… It’s a
wonderful addition to your stone setting " tool chest ". feel free
to contact me with questions off list. rer
i was wondering what a more appropriate gauge would be - i would like to set stones up to 3 mm in size.
Kirsten, a highly skilled setter can set a 3mm stone into 22 gauge
in many cases. You may or may not have that skill, but it’s also not
the point. The #1 mistake newbies with stones make is not allowing
for the depth of the stone. Our policy, which is not unique, is that
the culet cannot touch flesh. There are some stones with softer
points that it’s not so bad with, but having diamond or even CZ
culets rake across your finger or pound into your collar/chest will
last about 60 seconds before you take it back to the maker. So for a
3mm stone you’re looking at 2.75mm stock, or something like that - I
could look it up in B&S, but offhand I don’t know that in gauges -
don’t use them. One of the reasons for the use of undergalleries is
to raise the stone without raising weight, but that’s generally more
for pendants than band rings. I’d strongly advise you bear all this
in mind, but otherwise just try thicker metal until YOU are
comfortable - you’re the setter, after all.
Kirstin-
Good for you to experiment with flush setting!
Always your metal has to be thicker than your stones are deep.
Otherwise you have the culets poking through.
After drilling out where we want the stones,we cut the seat for the
stone with a ball bur just a little bit smaller than the stone. Then
we just kiss it with a bearing bur the same size of the stone and
then just snap the stone into place and run a burnisher around the
edge with a small oiled burnisher. We usually do this with diamonds.
If you are using colored stones you’ll have to be a little more
gentle, orjust have spares on hand. Having calibrated stones makes
it soooo much easier. Stones with too thick or thin a girdle are
tough to get level. Get yourself a bunch of cheap calibrated c-zs or
synthetics stones to experiment with. You’ll have to mess us a few
times to find YOUR best technique.
Equally important is the thickness of the bottom of your ring shank.
When you flush or channel set stones the mounting is weakened where
you have drilled through. If the bottom of your shank is the same
thickness and width as the top of the ring, when worn the ring will
want to bend at the weakest point,(the top), and you will have
stones shifting and popping out.
So always lighten your shanks at the bottom when setting stones in
the main body of the ring.
Good luck and have fun.
Jo
www.timothywgreen.com
Against my better judgement I will comment on the subject.
Flush setting is any setting where table of the stone is flush
with the surface of the metal. There are many methods of actually
securing the stone, so requirement would change depending on the
method.
The minimal thickness of metal required is thickness of the
girdle of the stone times 2. Increase to compensate for lack of
skills.
To draw connection between stone diameter and metal thickness is
raising the question of how we approach the setting of 10 mm stone.
It should be obvious that depth of the stone should be compensated by
other means then increasing metal thickness.
I will be away for a few days, so if someone disagrees with my point
of view, I will respond when I return.
Leonid Surpin
invest in an ALLset master system from Foredom..It assists you in making perfect flush settings...
Profession Jewelry Magazine (PMJ) has an Archive Article
(Flush-Setting Round Brilliant Diamonds in a Platinum Band) with
pictures using the AllSet
(I’ve saved their magazines specifically for these ‘how-to’ articles
Dear Mr. Surpin,
To draw connection between stone diameter and metal thickness is raising the question of how we approach the setting of 10 mm stone. It should be obvious that depth of the stone should be compensated by other means then increasing metal thickness.
I do not disagree with your point. I do wonder however, if you could
elaborate on your point number three. Thank you in advance.
Sincerely,
Jessi
p.s. I hope you had a nice trip.
Profession Jewelry Magazine (PMJ) has an Archive Article (Flush-Setting Round Brilliant Diamonds in a Platinum Band) with pictures using the AllSet http://tinyurl.com/2285lp
Likely I won’t be the only one to point out that the article shows an
improper way to flush set stones. It’s not the AllSet part, it’s the
hammering part. A couple of setters have said on this thread how to
do it properly - cut the bearing, insert the stone, rub it in. A good
setter is able to set a stone into a polished surface without
disturbing the surface around it, or not much. Now, I’m a pretty good
setter, but not a great one, and sometimes I need to resort to
hammering to tighten up stones, too, but that doesn’t make it right -
just that I’m not good enough at it. Just so you know - yes, it will
work, but it’s not the “right” way to do it.
Jessica, one good rule to remember is to use domed stock
-particularly when starting out at learning gypsy/roman or flush
setting. that extra depth makes it far easier to work with and far
easier to have enough metal to remove if you make a mistake without
having to begin the piece again from scratch. You can cast two pieces
in cuttlebone if you have no other options, or means of casting, and
solder them together for practice pieces (when finishing you remove
all evidence of solder joins so it is undectectable in the finished
piece (Sylvia Wicks in her book “Jewellery Making Manual” details the
process- or write me off list and i’ll scan it for you) or purchase
pre-fabricated domed silver rings to learn on…they are direct and to
the point on stones ( as Surpin says stone depth x2. 5) no greater
than say 6mm for most cast rings available from the major US findings
distributors…
starting your hole with a punch, then drill press then setting bur,
and you are off with your round bur or scorpers / square gravers to
remove the necessary metal to cut a seat ad have enough to rub over
(or use a hammer hand piece if tis still loose and you have that
type of handpiece…if not a dual head hammer -one nylon the other
fiber or rubber depending on the model will suffice) in the end
annealing as you go. It’s not as easy as you may think…and neither
is it as hard…it’s a matter of measuring the stone, centering the
drilled opening and roughing it out carefully-as you can always
remove more metal later, as opposed to too much up front…
I personally use the technique a lot as it’s one of my favourite
setting methods and once you get it, refining the skill is rapidly
achieved and adaptable to different stone shapes-although I
recommend your starting with rounds…
rer
I won't be the only one to point out that the article shows an improper way to flush set stones.
Can you explain the actual steps and tools used to do it right?
Cheers,
CS
It's not the AllSet part, it's the hammering part. A couple of setters have said on this thread how to do it properly - cut the bearing, insert the stone, rub it in. A good setter is able to set a stone into a polished surface without disturbing the surface around it, or not much. Now, I'm a pretty good setter, but not a great one, and sometimes I need to resort to hammering to tighten up stones, too, but that doesn't make it right
Personally, I always found the allset to be a rather clumsy tool. I
prefer a good true running quick change handpiece over the #30, so
the allset is a bother for me just to use that #30 handpiece, but it
also usually seems overkill. If the idea is simply to control depth,
I prefer good magnification, so I can simply SEE where I’m cutting.
And I’ve found the usual reason one might need to hammer the metal to
tighten the setting is incorrect cutting of the seats. And here’s
where I differ from some other setters. I don’t use a hart bur or
setting bur to cut a seat with a distinct “shelf”, at least not with
diamonds. When I first learned the basics of pave setting, at a GIA
stone setting class many years ago, I was taught to cut the seats
with a bud bur, so the seat is a tapered hole, not a straight sided
one with a distinct level seat already cut. instead, (and this
sometimes takes a bit of cut, try, cut a bit more, etc, adjusting)
you get the hole sized so you can then take a brass rod “pusher”,
and push the diamond fairly firmly down into that tapered hole. The
edge of the diamond’s girdle is the cutting tool that actually
defines and cuts the actual seat the diamond sits on. If you push the
diamond back out after doing this, it shows as a bright line in the
tapered hole, and unlike any seat cut with a bur, it’s a perfect, 100
percent contact, exact seat for the stone. getting it so the tables
are at the right height, and level, is what takes some practice. But
once seated like this, even before burnishing or raising beads, one
can take the ring or other jewelry, tip it upside down, and rap it on
the benchtop lightly, and the stone will not move or fall out of it’s
seat, being held by friction on it’s girdle. At this point, the
amount of metal that then needs to be brought over the diamond to
finish setting it, either by raising beads, or by burnishing the
edge for a flush set, is much less than what might be needed with a
seat cut with a hart bur, where the stone is not in such intimate
contact with the metal. And because that metal, beads or burnished
edge, is not trying to make up for the slghtly oversized seat from a
hart bur, it’s much less likely to loosen up with time, since now the
metal actually holding the stone extends alll the way to the girdle.
With hammered over metal, often there’s a slight gap left inside the
metal at the girdle, so as the top surface wears and weakens, the
stone becomes free to move a little, and when that happens, it
starts to make it’s own seat larger via abrasion.
When I look at antiques with good pave work that has lasted the last
hundred years, and occasionally have to replace broken stones or the
like, it usually seems to me that the setters who did that work,
seated the stones much the way I do. The seats usually are perfect
fits for the girdles, little metal needs to actually come over the
stone to hold it securely, and the stones have stayed in and tight
for a long time.
Seating and setting stones like this is admittedly a bit slower (at
least for me), than doing it via methods like using an allset tool,
or cutting seats with a hart bur and “snapping” stones in, but for
diamonds, at least, and usually hard stones like ruby and sapphire,
it seems to me to produce better work.
Hope that’s of use.
Peter Rowe
I do wonder however, if you could elaborate on your point number three.
Presumably he’s talking about the fact that for the given proportions
of a round brilliant diamond (or other gem), an increase in diameter
leads to an increase in the depth of the stone and the suggestion
that to flush set stones, larger stones require thicker metal is
impractical when it gets to largeer stones, such as a 10 mm stone.
After all, one wouldn’t use metal that’s 6mm thick (total depth of
ideal cut stone = approx 60% of diameter) to make a ring so that you
could flush set the diamond. In other words, for bigger stones, you
need to use other methods and that’s what John was referring to when
he was talking about under galleries accommodating larger stones.
Helen
UK
Likely I won't be the only one to point out that the article shows an improper way to flush set stones. It's not the AllSet part, it's the hammering part. A couple of setters have said on this thread how to do it properly - cut the bearing, insert the stone, rub it in.
Over the years, I’ve had to reset literally hundreds of flush set
diamonds that were set by burnishing, and came out in the ultrasonic
when a customer came in for a cleaning. I dread cleaning other
jewelers’ burnish settings. But I have never had to reset one that I
set by hammering. That is the only way I will set them now. I
learned the burnishing way, but common sense told me that there’s not
much holding the stone in. And if the stone is not perfectly round
like the bur, then there’s even less holding it in. If the ring gets
bent out of shape even slightly, it’s going to fall out. I don’t care
if my way is the “right” way or not. It’s the secure way.
Lauren
Personally, I always found the allset to be a rather clumsy tool. I prefer a good true running quick change handpiece over the #30
Yeah, Peter, I wanted to say that… I’ve never used one, but then
again I’ve never wanted to, either.
Can you explain the actual steps and tools used to do it right?
Peter explained it pretty well in his post, as far as it goes. Some
setters like bud burs, some like ball burs. I use a hart bur because
I’m lazy - I’m not kidding, I tend to sacrifice the time it takes to
do what Peter says in favor of speed and brute force. I get
reasonable results but again when I need “that certain touch”, I
give it to a real setter. No pride there…
The man who by all accounts is the best setter in Northern
California taught me how to flush set properly (he’s the kind of guy
who uses acid to make 1/3 size burs): Make a seat for the stone in
some fashion such as Peter laid out in his post. Push in the stone
hard, as he said, making sure it’s straight, of course. Then I’ve
heard some various ways of pushing the metal, but my friend Jimmy
makes a tool out of an old bur with a point on the end at around a
45 degree angle, puts into a handle, and pushes HARD down on the
stone while moving around in a circle, seating the stone and making
a perfectly burnished round edge around the stone. This method only
works if the stone is tight to begin with, be aware. If it’s loose
it will just tumble under the tool. Plus it takes all of 30 seconds
one the stone is in place. The essential ingredient to all of this
is as Peter said - it is precision setting if done properly, and
it’s easy but the precision part is the tricky thing.
BTW, I worked with an ex-manager of Longines, and he told us that’s
how diamonds are set into watch dials, except they are press fit and
that’s all - no rubbing, no burnishing. The seats are
drilled/reamed, and micrometer-graded diamonds are pressed into
them, and that’s it…
Jessi,
I was making a point trying to separate technique from appearance.
Any setting should have a seat and a base. The distance between the
seat and the base is the depth of the stone from girdle to culet plus
a tad more.
In my book, flush setting is when stone table is flush with the
surface of the article. It is used when protruding stone can cause a
problem. Bangle bracelet for example.
The technique of creating this appearance is to solder tube slightly
larger diameter of the stone. The tube will joint the upper and the
lower surfaces of the bangle and will serve as virtual gallery, the
inside surface becomes a base, and the seat is created by drilling
the
tube to the required depth. The stone can be secured by raising bead,
or by burnishing over some metal, or by using Gypsy method of
setting, or illusion setting, and etc. The metal comprising the
bangle
is quite thin and rarely more than 0.4 mm.
Wedding band, while setting 1 pointers in 1 mm metal will work, a
much better appearance would be created by using bangle bracelet
approach. This approach also makes setting more stable and less prone
to loosing stones in case minor impact.
It is good to remember that flush setting is used either to protect
the stone, or to draw color of surrounding metal into the stone. For
example: a pale yellow diamond set flush in 18 kt yellow gold would
have an appearance of fancy yellow.
Few words about technique.
Gypsy setting was invented to conceal the girdle of a stone. It can
be set flush or protruding. Since concealing girdle makes stone look
smaller, the technique should be reserved for large cabochons. I
cannot think of a reason to use Gypsy on faceted stone.
Roman setting is a bit more interesting. True Roman is not used
nowadays. The technique was used when stone were cut out-of-round and
so were the holes. Think how difficult it was to make round hole in
the time of ancient Rome. The hole was made larger with undercuts on
girdle level. The stone was wrapped in gold or silver foil enclosing
pavilion and leaving some excess above the girdle. Such stone was
jammed into the hole allowing foil to flow and fill the gaps between
the stone and the hole undercuts. After that the excess of the foil
was burnished into the remaining openings and above the stone
creating
appearance of modern Gypsy setting.
Leonid Surpin.
Then I've heard some various ways of pushing the metal, but my friend Jimmy makes a tool out of an old bur with a point on the end at around a 45 degree angle, puts into a handle, and pushes HARD down on the stone while moving around in a circle, seating the stone and making a perfectly burnished round edge around the stone.
I do it a little differently, though not by much. First, my
burnishing tools aren’t old drills. They dull too quick. I make mine
from either 1/8 inch or 1/16 inch carbide rod (blank tools from
cutting tools suppliers. Bits and Bits carries the blanks). I grind
the ends to a slim “bullet” shape, coming to not quite a sharp
point. High polish with diamond compound (lapidary equipment makes
this easy, or the ceramic lap with diamond compound on a power hone
is also easy. Without that, you can make a small wood disk shaped
lap, about an inch in diameter, that will fit a screw mandrel for
your flex shaft, and charge that with diamond compound. slower, but
works too. In all cases, the tool is held for grinding and polishing
in a #30 handpiece, which I allow to spin as the bit contacts the lap
or polishing wheel, so the point is truely symmetrical. Plus, it’s
fast to do. Anyway, the whole bullet point is highly polished, except
the tip is cut flat. The purpose of that is so the contact area with
the metal is a tad wider, so the burnished surface stays smoother,
and the contact of the burnisher with the stone, if any, is not such
a sharp point, which can damage softer stones (anything but diamond),
as well as chipping the point of the burnisher.
Anyway, with that burnisher (the thin one I use the most, is held in
a pin vise, the larger one in a millegrain tool handle), I don’t
just point the tip at the stone straight down and go around. I start
with the burnisher laid back a bit, so it’s contacting the metal at
about a 30 degree angle, a bit shallower than John’s description will
yield. Doing it this way means I do have to rotate the workpiece,
which is a bit clumsier than simply going around with the burnisher,
but the effect of this is that the metal being burnished moves down
towards the stone, not so much back and away. After going around
once at this shallower angle, I go around again, with the burnisher
held at about a 45 degree contact angle, till the metal edge being
pushed over nicely contacts the stone. The result is a bright smooth
reflective edge tightly holding the stone, and because I started a
little shallower, there’s little if any burr thrown up on the
surface, plus I can control better how much metal actually comes over
the stone. The carbide burnishers take and keep a higher polish than
does steel, and especially when working on platinum, they offer less
friction and a higher polish on the finished metal. Try it. You’ll
like it. they’re not hard to make, and work a LOT better than steel,
even with golds. And for platinum work, it then doubles as a good
tool to have on the bench when you need to address the occasional bit
of porosity. The 1/8 inch diameter larger one gets most of that duty
on my bench. The smaller one also finds use in polishing up tiny
details that are hard to reach with anything else.
I should also mention that for me, magnification is crucial. A long
time ago, I got in the habit of doing a lot of work with a 10x
corrected eye loupe. Same hastings type lens used for diamond
grading, I get it in the B&L eye loupe form. They don’t come with a
head spring, so I have to make one. I cut a hole in the side of the
loupe so when it’s over my eye, I have the option of looking to the
side of the lens, giving me normal binocular vision that way, or
through the lens which is single eye at 10x. With that, I can easily
see just where the burnisher is, and that makes it possible to do
this safely with even colored stones, since I can keep the tip of
the burnisher from actually touching the stone (which the carbide
would scratch). In the case of colored stones, I finish it with a
mild steel burnisher for the final go around, tucking the metal as
close to the stone as reasonable, since the mild steel is less likely
to scratch the stone, and with colored stones, I don’t try to get
perfect contact of the burnished surface down to the stone, at least
not with the usual small sizes. Note too, that with colored stones,
especially anything other than corundum, you can’t so much just
press the stones into a tapered hole to fit the seat. So then I too
use a hart bur. I find it takes me longer to then burnish down the
edge properly when the seat is cut with a hart bur, so John’s
“laziness” in using it doesn’t seem to speed things up for me, at
least, illustrating that everyone has their own favorite way to do a
thing…
A couple years ago, I treated my aging eyes to a setting microscope.
Nice and clear, now that the vision is binocular. But with the
scope, I have to work harder to keep the work at the focal point of
the scope as I work and rotate the work, so it ends up slower, if
more precise. So I often still just use my familiar eye loupe
version…
Peter
Hi Lauren
But I have never had to reset one that I set by hammering. That is the only way I will set them now. Please elaborate on your method.
This is not my area of expertise but I would expect that there’s
more than one way. Please share.
KPK
I don't care if my way is the "right" way or not. It's the secure way.
Just as burnishing stones in can lead to stones not being set well,
so can hammering them in. In both cases, the key is not just how the
metal is pressed over the edge of the stone, but how well the stone
is seated beforehand. The problem with many of the times stones are
set with hammering, is that it’s done because the seat was too large,
so the stone slopped around in the seat before boatloads of metal had
to be moved over with a hammer to reach and extend over the girdle.
The result is that underneath the finished setting, next to the
girdle, is a crack shaped gap, what’s left of the oversized seat.
The metal holding the stone has to bridge that gap before contacting
the stone. That’s simply weaker. With wear and tear, contact and
pressing on the stone can move the holding edge more easily, sliding
back into that gap, enlarging it again, and becoming loose. While I
do see stones coming out now and then when not enough metal was
burnished over the girdle (see my post for how I do it, which DOES
bring enough metal over the girdle. Any more would be obscuring the
stone unreasonably), I also see many stones that are not out, that
have plenty of the hammered metal still over them, yet they’re
jiggling around loose, needing to be tightened because the hammered
over metal was trying to compensate for a bad seat, and couldn’t
maintain that over time.
The big problem for me with hammering the metal down to set the
stones is that it also usually creates a hollwed depressed crater or
flat around the stone, that messes up the contour of the surface
you’re setting in. That then requires either a very flexible
aesthetic sense to decide it still looks good, or it requires a good
deal of metal removal to restore the original clean surface contour.
Either way, it’s not as good a solution as not messing up that
surface in the first place, if possible.
Obviously, there will always be plenty of cases where you have no
choice but to reach for the hammer. The most common for me is
accidentally cutting a seat too deep, so deep that I simply cannot
burnish the metal down that far. White golds in particular can give
me that headache… The there are Fancy shapes with odd girdle
thicknesses, fragile strange large stones where a burnisher simply
won’t move enough metal or is too much of a risk of scratching the
stone, or just plain bad luck in getting a good seat cut, etc., etc.
But when you can do it with just a burnisher, and get a properly set
stone that way, it works better, giving a cleaner, neater look. When
I DO have to use a hammer, I usually try to use it only to assist,
finishing up the setting with the burnisher again, after moving the
overly stubborn metal with the hammer. Even when I do virtually the
whole job with the hammer, I usually end up finishing the edge with
that burnisher…
No matter how you set the stone, the first key is to be sure the
stone is snugly fitted in the seat. it should sit level and not slide
around sideways or easily tip. Do that, and then the metal set over
the girdle has a decent chance of keeping the stone tight. The second
key is that no matter how you move the metal, hammer or burnisher,
you have to take the time to look at what you’ve done once the stone
seems tight. With a hammer, many beginning setters move too much
metal, covering way too much of the stone. With a burnisher, those
in a hurry won’t move enough, so sometimes the girdle itself may
still be visible. Looking down at the stone, the metal should extend
up past the girdle edge. You can see it where it covers the point of
the main (kite shaped) facets. It should contact the stone there too,
not just bridge up over it leaving a gap. If it does that, the stone
is not coming out.
If on the other hand, the stone is burnished in too quickly (a
possibility when someone just goes round and round quickly with a
sharp point, as I’ve seen some setters do) then end result can look
like a bright round hole with the stone snug in the bottom, but a
close look shows the burnished inside edge way too close to vertical,
and the metal bright, but little of it actually moved over the stone
to hold it. Some of the people burnishing in stones do it poorly,
I’ll admit, and these stones may tend to come out more easily, simply
because they were never really set with enough metal over the stones
in the first place.
Burnishing in a stone means moving the upper edge of the drilled/cut
hole, down and over until it contacts the stone’s crown. In the
process, metal under and behind that edge is “upset” and moves down
and inwards at the same time. Stopping too soon simply doesn’t bring
metal down until it actually holds the stone, And people who use too
vertical a burnisher edge may find they’re mostly moveing metal down
but away from the stone, so again, it ends up not being held. Either
way, people in a hurry will find their stones don’t stay in, just as
those in a hurry or careless with a hammer will find they’ve made a
bloody mangled mess of the jewelry. However you do it, take your
time, do it right, and you won’t then have to find the time to do it
over.
Another thing I prefer about a burnisher is simply the neat look. It
gives a “bezel” edge with a nice tight reflective surface that goes
right down to the stone and contacts it. Crisp, bright, clean.
Hammered in stones often seem to be left with a somewhat ragged edge,
since that was where it was when the setter decided the stone was
tight and they should stop hammering. Instead, at that point, if
they’re doing it well, they need to switch to either a graver to
trim away excess metal leaving a nice bright reflector, or to a
burnisher, creating the same thing.
OK. I’m rambling again. Prolly betraying a certain lack of sleep or
something. G’night all.
Peter
I don't care if my way is the "right" way or not. It's the secure way.
Lauren - I don’t care either. Whatever floats yer boat and all. This
being an educational site, though, and it being the whole point of
it all, it’s important to show and know how things are done. Burnish
set stones that fall out in the ultrasonic are improperly set by
definition. Any stone can come loose or fall out if a ring is sized
or various other reasons. But it’s not (for my part) to try to
dictate how people work, just to show 'textbook setting" and, yes,
professional work. What or if anything people do with that is up to
them.