Trapezoid side stones in bars

Hi all! Attaching a photo of my CAD for this marquise center stone flanked by 2 trapezoids. I want these trapezoids set in bars on either side but I’m not sure what to do in CAD- is this more of a channel setting or a bezel setting? should I cut out a channel for the girdle in each bar, or use a stone cutter to treat it more like a bezel? Or maybe a channel in the one closest to the center stone and the outside bar a bezel? This is my first time doing a setting like this so just want to make sure I understand what my approach should be (ps, prongs are down just for the visual, they’ll be cast upright of course :grinning:)

Thank you!

When I build this sort of setting in cad, I just use the stone cutter for it. If the gem itself is close to the size of the actual stone, then it should be easy to set after casting. Just make sure the walls are thick enough in case the setter needs to do some extra buring.

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I am not a cad guy but hand carving this, I would most likely treat it like a channel set. I would make the channel maybe a half mm wider on each side so I have some room to play with during setting. I am assuming this will be sitting on some sort of bearing and the channel is just applying downward pressure to hold the gem in place?

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Although I’m not a setter, I’d think of making those prongs for the main stone longer in the model to facilitate bending over, and shaping when completing the piece in metal.

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For my self I would make the bars .75 mm thick and approximately. .5-.75 mm above the girdle of the stone and then use a cutter to cut the partial bezel or channel at 90% of the dimensions of the stone.
All that will leave enough room for most setters to work with.

Oh the prongs in the photo are just down like that for visual purposes because this is a screenshot from the photo I sent the client! They’ll be casted upright :slight_smile:

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