Three Stone Tube Ring

This is the ninth and final project in Stage 3 of the Silver Program at Jewellery Training Solutions. Yay! I’ve been really looking forward to making this one, and it didn’t disappoint! This is one that I will make again so that I can improve in several spots.

What were the challenges?

There were several challenges with this one, the biggest being soldering the decoration on the shoulders and making sure they were square. I got the ring all sanded and realized that one of them wasn’t square and had to go back to fix it. Another challenge was filing the tubes down in the inner side so they make the perfect ring shape. Lots, and lots of filing! The other challenge was pushing down the bezels - setting stones is definitely not coming easy to me.

Where could I improve?

I could definitely improve the stone setting - there are areas the bezels are not pushed down evenly, even though I went over and over it again. I have a lot of trouble seeing these days, and the glasses I have make it impossibly to use my magnifiers. I’m hoping to buy a microscope soon, and I think that will help a lot. Some of it just feels like guess work. Also, there’s a little bit of extra solder on one of the shoulder pieces, and some dreaded fire stain on the shank, which I didn’t notice until the final polish. Ugh!

What did I learn?

I have always used a setting bur when I tube set stones, but Peter teaches with a hart bur and a small round bur. I tried, but at the end got desperate and went back to the setting bur. Once again, I think I set the stones too low, which is why I had trouble getting the bezel pushed down. It’s funny, that when I try to set prong settings I always have the stone too high, but in a bezel setting it’s the opposite! I also learned how to tube set when the tubes are soldered together like this. The other thing that I really enjoyed in this lesson was just learning the steps to fabricate something like this!