In these "Series of Failed Setting Techniques" , I’ve attempted to make some ‘setting-mistakes’ and these results have been now photographed.
I’m going to scrap these few items and have the silver refined. Why? The ‘used’ silver tends to develop pin-holes just in areas that you don’t want any…( experience speaking here !)
I bought an upscale book on jewellery designs and went through the pages, specifically looking at their Diamond Setting photographs. OUCH, these pictures stirred me to take a few photographs to show you! So what went so wrong? Literally, everything went wrong, is this possible?
The setter neglected & avoided 'Burnishing the multitude of Beads’ . I know how he separated the bead-bar in between the stones. He used an old roughy shaped Flat-graver to ‘split & push’ over the four (4) beads.
The setter, with no respect to being careful, avoided improving the flat graver quality . He just dug in with his graver and no care was given on who would be looking at his workmanship afterwards!
You can observe all of the stones were set FIRST! I stopped using this method over 35 years ago!
Now what I do is to cut the metal pattern FIRST, then Bright-Cut. Thus leaving a nice clean edge around the stones’ girdle. What this setter did was also not bother to how the stones will be seating and many of them are literally all over the place. Not two of them are basically ‘in-line’.
Is this a testament to our professional ability & attitude?
The amazing part of these two following photo’s is that the ‘upscale jeweller-owner’ hadn’t noticed anything wrong, pity! Sorry, I’m not permitted to divulge the name of this company & I don’t like to have lawyers calling me…:>(
To improve on this after I would have done the Diamond Setting , I would use a #006 bud bur to clear up any unsightly marks in between the beads. I would avoid any stone setting until the lines around the diamond hole are clean of any little lines from the graver cutting!
Can you see that all of the diamonds that were set are ‘not in line’! How obvious is this great mistake?
There was no hint of this setter using his ''Bead-Burnisher" to just nicely ‘round-off the beads’ into little round balls. Out of a Scale of 10 for being a good setter, I’d give him a definite 4…(maybe)!
BTW, Where is the “Quality Control” manager in this setting project?
As you can see in these two photo’s is that there is no angled faceting for the Pavilion of the Princess-cut stone. The little angles are not in line and the stone won’t be sitting correctly, if at all securely!
I saw these ‘mistakes’ and I want you to understand just how important it is to use your 10x magnification of your loupe. If the setter caught these problems, he would have made a better attempt & no problems would be noted here, trust me!
What do we have here? We have a girdle of the stone that is not sitting anywhere near the ‘bearing’ for the stone. The girdle just doesn’t even match where the ‘bearing cut’ was made, again no angled-cutting for the Pavillion facets. Is this stone going to be sitting in this ring for long-term? Hardly or not at all!
Can you see that these two stones are overlapping each other at the most delicate areas, the girdles!
The stones were secured with a flat graver carving a sliver of metal to hold the stone. This process is a ‘temporary’ second-option in holding, but not securing the stones.
In this better photograph, you can now see just how ‘ugly’ the setting now has become. All you see are pin-holes ‘here & there’ just making the setting look like an amateur tried their hands on it, yuk!
Under 20x power magnification, you can see again just how this stone IS NOT SITTING CORRECTLY!
Can you count the many (12) little ‘wire-beads’ …( as I call them ) to secure the poorly set stones!
Only three stones were of the same colour, the stone shown was ‘2 shades of a darker pink’.
In the last photograph, you can see just how close to the edge of the bezel, is the girdle of the stone! One little attempt of polishing & the girdle would be overlapping the sides of the ring & gallery.
OMG, another two more stones overlapping each other, why is this? Here are a few reasons, the stones were picked long after the ring was created. I call this poor process; " Make & Find afterwards ". All of my creations in past years were made after I bought my gemstones.
This simple process allows the skilled jeweller, or the “Computer Aided Designer” to create his ring to match my stones.
I have explored in detail how some setters think that no one will be viewing any of these errors!
Are these mistakes acceptable? I have other ‘very descriptive words’ for the reader, but they are not to be written, I’d just say that this ring looks ultra-disgusting!..