Day 55 Bezel Making Project

I was digging through my bins of stuff I haven’t looked in for a while, and I found a rectangle shaped Tiger Eye stone, so I said to myself, “Self, let’s make something with this stone”. So that is what I will do for the next project, try to turn this stone into a project.

The first thing I am going to do is build a bezel for the stone. I have some sterling that I want to use for the stone setting, so I first roll it out to .8mm thick. I have a Digital Caliper that I usually use, but the battery quit working, so I will use my old stand-by Dial Caliper. It is a good idea to have backups for stuff like that, because if you are dependent on technology, at times it will fail you, you don’t want to be stuck not be able to work. On a bezel, it is not as important because you can always judge by eye the thickness you like, but there are times when exact measurements are required.

I anneal the silver I just rolled out for the bezel with my Mini Torch and quench it in my heated pickle, I use Sparex. (If you want an explanation of annealing, See my post at www.JewelryMonk.com/anneal) I anneal the setting base as well, but I let this air cool because I want the dark color to remain because this shows my scribe lines better when I layout the stone shape. Next I file one of the edges flat with a #4 Flat Hand File, add a small piece of soft wax to the base and press the stone into the wax. This will hold the stone firmly in place to allow me to scribe a line around the stone.

Next I grab my Saw Frame with a # 3/0 Saw blade. Here is how I load a saw blade into my frame. I first put about 1/2″ of the saw blade into the clamp that is closest to the handle. I make sure the teeth of the blade are pointing towards the handle and tighten. I place the handle against my chest and the other end against my Bench Pin. I add a little pressure to the frame, line up the blade in the other clamp and tighten. I have the frame length set about 1 inch shorter than the saw blade length and seldom adjust this screw since all saw blades are the same length.

Now I start to cut the piece on the outside of the scribed lines. Here are a couple of tricks to doing this, first I have a small piece of Bees Wax that I run my saw blade through to make cutting easier. What this does is adds a little wax in between the teeth of the saw blade and lubricates the cutting process. I also have an old tooth brush that I have handy all the time on my bench. As I am cutting, sometimes I need to clean the area I am cutting so I can see the scribed line. I want to get as close to the line without touching it. This makes for less filing to get the stone base to shape.

Now I use my #4 Flat Hand File to file to the scribed lines. I now have the base for my bezel setting. Come back and we will see what we can make out of this stuff I have found.

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Have an Awesome day!

Doug