PMC bezel cup for gold

Jewelry Discussion
1

I am wondering what type of bezel cup to use with the 22k PMC gold? I
know there are fine silver bezel cups for regular pmc, but what do
you use with the PMC gold? Anyone know a company source?? Any help
would be appreciated!

Thanks!
Nicole

2

You can create a bezel from the 22k gold PMC. See Brynmorgen Press’
“PMC Technic” (Jennifer Kahn’s chapter on setting stones in PMC).

Hope this helps,
Linda Kaye-Moses

3

Hi Nicole,

With either silver or gold metal clay you’d have to make a
mechanical bond. The fine silver bezel cup won’t bond or fuse to
the fine silver metal clay just as it won’t fuse to gold. Hadar
Jacobsen has a good tute in her new book for implanting bezel cups.
I’ll give my version.

Since metal clay shrinks and puts pressure on the cup, it may warp
if fired in place. If, for some reason, you can actually fire with
the stone in the cup, you’ll be okay. I have fired with just the
cup set into a slab of clay three cards thick and it came out fine. I
just use the open end of the cup as a cutter and after setting it in
the resulting hole (use some thick slip in the hole first), I wiggle
it around to expand the clay a bit. The clay shrinks up to the bezel
and locks it in place. I also like to scratch up the side walls of
the bezel to give the metal some tooth. Helps the slip and clay
stick to the milled metal better.

If you’re concerned about the color difference of the cup when used
with gold clay, you could fire and then either Keum Boo or use Aura
22 or AGS to plate the cup before setting the stone.

HTH. Good luck with your setting.
Lora
LoraHart.Com