B Golden Jewelry School
View from my hotel in Austin, TX
This past Friday, I attended a Flush Setting Course at the B Golden Jewelry School in Austin, Texas. The course was amazing, and our instructor, Donnie Jarvis, was a fantastic instructor!
This was a one-day course designed to work on just one-skill. Flush setting is a skill I’ve done on several designs in the past, but not without a lot of difficulty. My goal for the course was to learn how to properly do the setting, but to also learn where I was making critical mistakes! I learned all of that and so much more!!!
Our tool kit
We were given a kit of 10 2.5mm cubic zirconia stones to set into a copper plate and then later, a brass ring as practice.
Along with lots of information on the mechanics of flush setting and why we take the steps we take to insure a proper stone fit. So much care needs to be taken in properly measuring not only your stones, but also your burs to ensure everything matches up. So many of my past mistakes have come from not having the proper size bur for the stone…along with also not getting my hole the correct size.
Our first step was to measure the stones. Both the height and width. it’s important to measure the height of the stone, so you are sure you have enough metal for the stone, and measuring the width, helps you know what the maximum sized hole you need to drill for the setting.
Once you have your stones measured, you need to drill a pilot hole. This hole allows the point of the faceted stone to have a place to sit. Next, you use incremental sizes of burs, to drill the hole out larger and larger until you get to just under the size of your stone.
It’s important to continually check your stone with the size of the hole, and this takes much longer than you would think! A hole that is too big, will allow the stone to wobble when you go to set. A hole that is too small, will not allow enough metal to be there to secure the stone in place.
As I wanted to really learn the technique, I practiced with half of my stones, and came up with this beautiful piece below. I think I may frame this one and hang it up in the shop! What do you think?
The course was so much fun, with so much knowledge shared! It was great to have a day filled with conversation from other metalsmiths, and to see everyone’s progress and work! I loved it! I am looking forward to really practicing this setting some more, and really perfecting the skill.
