Hi Jimmy,
I work as a diamond setter, and in 14 years I’ve only been called
upon setting diamonds on a steel watch a couple of times. This is to
say that I’m no very experienced setting on steel. However, I can
remember that it wasn’t a particulary painstaking task. I don’t know
what kind of steel were those watch cases made of, but I completed
the task using normal tools: not very expensive round steel burs, and
HSS gravers. When drilling the holes I didn’t dare to use the normal
twist drills I use for go gold, so I drilled the pilot holes using
small round burs with plenty of lubricant. I have to say that I went
through many normal round burs, both at drilling the holes and at
enlarging the holes for the stones to fit.
I completed all the graver work before setting the stones -mainly
with an onglette graver-, trying to forget a bit about the concept of
"bright-cutting" at the sides of the row of stones to give the work
a sort of machine-done look, and also because I thougth it might be
rather difficult to get a good bright cut in steel, so I cut straight
lines with the onglette at a rather steep angle, leaving the "walls"
almost vertical.
As I said before, once I had all the holes done, I did all the
graver work before setting the stones, leaving two micro-blocks of
metal between the holes, micro-blocks that will be split in two with
a sort of small wedge once the stones are placed in the holes, those
two parts acting as beads and securing the stones (each stone four
beads). I think this is the best way to set stones in a watch, since
first putting the stones in the holes, then raise the beads with a
round or onglette graver, and finally clean all the metal and bright
cut (with onglette or flat gravers), in steel, in my opinion is a
no-no.
As for finishing the beads, I remember that in one watch I used a
normal beading tool to round the block-beads. But in the other watch,
since the customer wanted a real machine-done look, I just used a
small burnisher to brighten the beads a bit, get rid of any burr, but
leaving the beads with a visible square look (this was
time-consuming).
However, and once again in my opinion, the most importan thing to
consider when setting stones in a watch, or in any other flat
surface, is that the table facets of the stones are all in the same
plane, all of then reflecting light at the same time when moving the
piece. Many times we setters pay too much attention to the perfect
setting of “each” stone -no burrs in the beads, the bright cut, etc.-
and tend forget abotout the “whole”, about the final result, the
final aspect of the piece: few customers -even jewellers- may notice
those small defects without magnification, but the table facets not
being all in the same plane, that is noticeable to almost anyone.
Well Jimmy, I hope this could be of any help.
Bye, and Merry Christmas.
Fernando