Advanced Three Stone Ring

This is a project from Stage 9 of the Apprentice program at Jewellery Training Solutions, a stage dedicated to advanced soldering skills and construction, as well as multistone settings. The tricky part of these settings is that the spacing has to be exactly right - you don’t want space between the stones, but you also can’t have the girdles touching since they will break when setting. One more project to go in this level, only seven more to go to finish the program. To date I’ve completed 70 projects for this program.

What were the challenges?

The most challenging part of this project was to get the spacing between the stones correct. Also, holding the setting while trying to cut out the slot was challenging. My fingers are pretty sore!

Where could I improve?

I got the spacing on a couple of the prongs wrong - two on the end and one on the oval. Also, there is a gap between one of the prongs and the setting which can be seen from underneath. I also think the alignment of the stones is just slightly off.

What did I learn?

I learned a lot with this one. In fact, I feel like I rather had a breakthrough in my skills. This is the first ring I’ve made where I’m confident the stones are set correctly and that it wasn’t by accident. I also have a much better understanding of how to size the bezels correctly to get the appropriate spacing between the stones. He showed a different way to make the slotted bezel this time, and I like this way much better - just make a thick bezel and saw out the middle.