Best way to set black star sapphire

Jewelry Discussion
1

Hi Guys,

I got a couple of stones today, and one is a black star sapphire.

Can anyone suggest the best way to set this stone so that the star
is most visible?

Regards Charles A.

2 
Can anyone suggest the best way to set this stone so that the star
is most visible?

Hard to do without examining the stone. If stone is high biseau is
good way to do it. But appearance of the star is mostly due to
cutting than setting.

Leonid Surpin

3

I find that setting a star sapphire looks best in a bezel. Prongs
will work but I don’t like prongs for this cause you have to cut the
prongs kind of short. You don’t say what it is going into. If your
building some thing then I would put it in a bezel.

Regards
Danny M.

4

Hi Leonid,

Hard to do without examining the stone. If stone is high biseau is
good way to do it. But appearance of the star is mostly due to
cutting than setting.

I’ve found that the star appears when the lighting conditions are
right too, so it’s not always apparent, pretty cool when it does show
up though.

Without examining the stone, that’s a good point. I have a light
tent, I’ll have to play around with taking photos of it to see if I
can reveal the star that way. Photoshopping a star in would be
cheating :wink:

Regards Charles A.

5 
I find that setting a star sapphire looks best in a bezel.

Thanks Danny,

I was thinking a bezel setting, but I was wondering if there was a
better way to treat a stone like this.

Regards Charles A.

6 
Can anyone suggest the best way to set this stone so that the star
is most visible?

Under a strong incandescent light. And leave it there.

7 
Without examining the stone, that's a good point. I have a light
tent, I'll have to play around with taking photos of it to see if
I can reveal the star that way.

The diffuse lighting that light tents are intended to give you will
not show the star. For that to show up, you need a fairly good point
source of light. That’s why star sapphires often look their best in
sunlight. With your light tent, get the lighting so it’s right for
the ring/metal, etc. They add a strong light from directly in front
of the ring in the form of a focused flashlight or similar pretty
strong, but fairly narrow, beam of light. Often a good penlight held
just outside of the camera’s view will do it. Moving the light source
moves the image of the star, and the brighter that point source, the
stronger the star will show up.

And photoshopping in the star, unless you’ve got considerable skill
with photoshop and perhaps good visual examples to work from, would
be difficult to get to look real. You’re trying to draw a properly
colored and textured image as it appears through a lens, after all.
That would be tricky to get just right.

Peter

8 
The diffuse lighting that light tents are intended to give you
will not show the star. For that to show up, you need a fairly good
point source of light. That's why star sapphires often look their
best in sunlight. With your light tent, get the lighting so it's
right for the ring/metal, etc.

Thanks for that Peter,

I can put an additional light spot in the tent, even a bright led
would do the trick of adding a point of light.

I’ve seen substandard efforts at putting a star into stones, and it
looks terrible.

If you are good at applying gradients you could make a decent effort
at photoshopping a star in (or if you have Lightwave, you could
simulate a star), but like I said that’s cheating :wink:

Regards Charles A.