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Peter's techniques for setting items with prongs
Hey, guys.
I've been diving through my archives trying to find a specific post with directions on setting stones into pronged settings. I'm pretty positive that it's a Peter Rowe post, but I'm striking out finding it. The technique has the prongs being progressively brought up from the sides instead of being pulled back away from the setting and then pushed back. The post was extremely clear and easy to follow. I've got a friend who is setting 80 cabs and is having problems getting her prongs to seat correctly over the stone and I was going to pass over a copy of my archive of this post and now I *can't locate it*. Does anyone recognize this and have a copy that they can lay their hands on easily? She's got about another two and a half weeks before the big show these cabs are due to go up for sale at. Pat Swan Six Swans Designs -- * Patricia A. Swan, moderator, rec.arts.sf.tv.babylon5.moderated * * newsgroup submission address: * * moderator contact address: * * personal contact address: * |
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In article ,
wrote: Hey, guys. I've been diving through my archives trying to find a specific post with directions on setting stones into pronged settings. I'm pretty positive that it's a Peter Rowe post, but I'm striking out finding it. The technique has the prongs being progressively brought up from the sides instead of being pulled back away from the setting and then pushed back. The post was extremely clear and easy to follow. I've got a friend who is setting 80 cabs and is having problems getting her prongs to seat correctly over the stone and I was going to pass over a copy of my archive of this post and now I *can't locate it*. Does anyone recognize this and have a copy that they can lay their hands on easily? She's got about another two and a half weeks before the big show these cabs are due to go up for sale at. Pat Swan Six Swans Designs This may be the one your looking for From: Peter W. Rowe Subject: Trick to Setting Stones In Stamped Bezels? Date: Wed, 15 Oct 2003 02:13:47 GMT Organization: EarthLink Inc. -- http://www.EarthLink.net On Tue, 14 Oct 2003 18:06:33 -0700, in rec.crafts.jewelry "Dale" wrote: I got some 14k stamped gold open-back oval bezels from Hoover & Strong, and I took them to a someone who was going to show me how to set my calibrated cabochons in them, and she was unable to do it. Whenever she tried to push the bezel over the stone with jeweler's pliers, and also with prong setting pliers, the metal would flex, so she never could get the stone to remain seated, and was unable to burnish the bezel to get the metal to rest against the stone. She tried annealing the metal, and also grinding to thin it out, but nothing worked. Is there some trick to this, or was she just using the wrong techniques? Wrong techniques in two catagories. First, with flexible settings like open backed bezels or any of a wide range of more delicate settings, it's often needed to support the work in some manner to keep it from flexing, or even being crushed, by the forces needed to set the stones. The traditional material for this is orange flake shellac, which I still prefer to most others. It melts easily enough with a low flame (take care not to burn it, holds the metal well, and when cool, stays nicely rigid. And it's cheap compared to other stuff. More than a few folks, though, find it a bit too brittle, and prefer setters cements that start with shellac, but then add various fillers to make them tougher. There are a variety of formulations that do this, some sold just as "setters cement", and others sold as lapidary dop wax (the red works nicely) or other such. Commonly brown in color, or red, but I've also seen variations in an ochre yellow color. All will work for you, with the minor differences in melting point or hardness probably not being significant for this use. When you're done, you melt the shellac again, taking care not to overheat your stone, and clean off excess in alcohol. Or, if you like there are new thermoplastic materials out now that do the same sort of thing, but with a bit less mess than shellac based products. Jett Sett is one such. white plastic beads that melt in very hot water to a goey consitancy, like melted shellac, will also adhere somewhat to the metal, and when set, forms a rigid tough support for the metal during setting. Second, for those low bezels, pliers are the wrong tool. You can use them when such bezels are securely soldered down to something, and then it's sometimes a shortcut, but even then, pliers are not really the right way to set those bezels. For the short, tapered, thick walled types, you use chasing punches or a hammer handpiece, and for the stamped ones with vertical, thin metal walls, you use a burnisher or a bezel roller. Gentler than pliers. Pliers want to push both sides of a bezel together at once, which is twice the stress needed to push just one side at a time. With a bezel roller or burnisher, you're putting a lot less force on the metal than with pliers. And in both cases, either hammering with punches or a hammer handpiece (or in some cases, even just with a small hammer itself), or in the thin metal types you do with bezel rollers or burnishers, the work will be a LOT easier when the bezel is properly supported in some sort of setting cement, shellac, or jett sett compound.. Peter Added Note Also, it may be important to mention that you need to be sure the bezels are annealed. Most are supplied that way by manufacturers, but some are not. In normal use, they get annealed during the assembly process, when one solders them onto the jewelry, but if that's not happening, then be sure to anneal the things, or they may be too springy still from stamping. |
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On Tue, 11 Nov 2003 00:45:42 GMT, in rec.crafts.jewelry "Patricia A. Swan"
wrote: Does anyone recognize this and have a copy that they can lay their hands on easily? Gosh. I should have that around somewhere, but I'm afraid I'm at a loss to remember the post you describe. Just not ringing a bell. but if you can more completely describe what your friend is doing now, and the problem she's having, I'd be happy to give it another go. And I'm sure others in the group would also be happy to lend advice, if we had a clearer picture of just what the problem is. Is she setting cabs up in the tips of prongs, or down on some sort of undergallery, or base that's more definitive than seats just cut in the prongs? If she's cuttng seats in the prongs, what tool(s) are used to cut the seats, and how is she shaping them? How is she then tightening the prongs or bending them over? Any preshaping of the prong tips before the stone is placed in the seat? What kind of stones are they? (one can be a lot more forceful with a bunch of sapphire cabs than one can be with opals... Peter |
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"Patricia A. Swan" wrote in message ... Hey, guys. I've been diving through my archives trying to find a specific post with directions on setting stones into pronged settings. I'm pretty positive that it's a Peter Rowe post, but I'm striking out finding it. The technique has the prongs being progressively brought up from the sides instead of being pulled back away from the setting and then pushed back. The post was extremely clear and easy to follow. I've got a friend who is setting 80 cabs and is having problems getting her prongs to seat correctly over the stone and I was going to pass over a copy of my archive of this post and now I *can't locate it*. Does anyone recognize this and have a copy that they can lay their hands on easily? She's got about another two and a half weeks before the big show these cabs are due to go up for sale at. Pat Swan Six Swans Designs -- * Patricia A. Swan, moderator, rec.arts.sf.tv.babylon5.moderated * * newsgroup submission address: * * moderator contact address: * * personal contact address: [Perhaps this is the one:] From: "Don Robinson" Subject: videos on stone setting inst. Date: Wednesday, August 08, 2001 4:00 PM Our moderator, Peter Rowe, sent me the following message when I was learning to set stones. Follow his instructions and I believe you will learn everything you need to set prongs. It has solved all my problems. Here are his instructions to me: Many setters just push prongs over with a flat/blunt ended pushing tool. Not a rocker (which easily slips). I use a tool, sold for that purpose, which is just square steel stock in a graver type handle, who's end is just flat and square across, not polished. I've sanded it slightly concave with a sanding drum to make it even less likely to slip. If the head is strong enough that you can just push a tip without the whole head racking to the side, this works just fine for most setting work. Takes a bit more work than pliers, but it works. If you prefer setting pliers, and they often DO help a lot, then try this: In auto parts type stores, you can get a slim, miniature version of the plumber's channelock type pliers. You know, the type where you can, when the hinge is wide open, slide the jaws closer or farther apart. The full size version is great on plumbing pipes. this little one is made for adjusting ignition parts, and are called ignition pliers, I think. Take the teeth off the jaws, groove, if desired, the upper jaw to fit over a prong. If you like, round over the sides of the lower jaw so it won't leave gashes inside a ring shank... And voila. You've got a setting plier for a lot less money than a traditional one, with a much wider range of sizes it will grip. but you may well not need that either. While simple setting techniques say just put the stone in the seat and bend the tips over the stone, there is another way. Here, you cut a seat, then bend the tips over, with normal needle nose pliers, to the same, or even further degree, that you would with the stone in place, but without the stone in place. Without the stone, you can just grab the tip and bend it cleanly over with small pliers, with the plier jaw maintaining a crisp inner corner to the bend. clean up, with files, burrs, or whatever, the inner corner of the seat under that tip, if it needs it, till it's the same angle as the stone girdle, except slightly tighter (tip bent very slightly too far down) Now grab the entire prong, not just the tip, and bend it back a little bit from it's base, or where it attaches to the upper gallery level of the head. Just a little is enough. Do this to all, and if you've got it right, you can just barely slip the stone into the head despite the fact the tips are already bent over. Now, with anything that can push, a prong pusher, graver handle, side of a plier jaw, your teeth, etc, push the prongs straight towards the stone. They won't go tight, of course, since they spring back, but you can move them most of the way. This is just to take up much of the movement needed, not to tighten the stone. Now grasp the prongs by adjacent (side to side) pairs of prongs, in ordinary pliers, and squeeze them together slightly. They move towards each other, side to side, parallel to the girdle, rather than directly towards the stone. Go around the entire stone this way, each prong being grasped twice, bent first to one side (towards one neighbor), and then towards the other. They'll end up evenly spaced again. But they'll also end up tight to the stone, since in this bending, a slight amount of movement is towards the stone. Since the side to side bending is much more, and is enough to overcome the elastic limits of the prong so it stays bent, the simultaneous bending towards the stone also stays there, without springing back away from the stone. When you're doing this, it is not necessary to get the prongs to bend side to side very much. Often, you're just slightly squeezing the prongs sideways, and it can seem that they haven't moved much or at all, yet when you're done going around the stone, somehow they've all tightened up on the stone a good deal. if needed, go around the stone more than once till the prongs are all nicely snugged up on the stone. This is all very gentle and modest, in terms of pressures used. You ease up on getting things tight and secure, rather than needing to get it all at once, so you don't damage the stone. It's surprising how fast this tightens the prongs on the stone, despite the fact that it seems you're bending the prongs only sideways. If you consider the actual directions the prongs bend, though, you realize that while most of the bending direction is sideways, a small amount of the movement is indeed towards the stone. This method of getting prongs to move towards the stone by moving them side to side is what GIA called the "vector" technique of prong tightening, when they taught it in the stone setting class I took from them way too many years ago. Works very well. It's also often the best way to tighten loose stones in existing jewelry. Since you never push the prong directly towards the stone, the stresses on the stone which might chip it, are much much less than if you simply tried to bend prongs directly towards the stone. And because you can precisely form and shape the seat of the stone without the stone there, unexpected chips from a prong bending in a way you don't anticipate or contacting wrong are much less. For some shapes of stones, like emerald cuts, where seats in the prongs need to be flat planes, rather than what a setting bur cuts, you can define a precise angled seat with files and saws much more easily this way too, since you can get the angles just right without the stone and it's fragile edges being at risk during the bending of the tip. The prong tips are bent slightly too much, so as you tighten the prong, the last bit of the stone to fully contact the seat is the girdle itself, as the prong tip hits the stone first at it's end, not at the girdle. The tip then actually relaxes slightly upwards as you tighten the prong. the girdle is the most fragile, so having the prong contact first slightly up the crown facets is much safer, and insures that in fighting to get that tip all the down flush to the stone you don't break the stone, since this way, it starts out all the way down flush... About the only real downside to this method is that because you have to first bend the prongs back at their base, you may need to clean up (rubber wheel, etc) some ripple or bending marks down on the side of the head. But this seems more than made up for in that you then don't have as much trouble cleaning up the tips themselves, since you can get them mostly right before you insert the stone. Hope this helps. Peter Rowe * Andrew Werby www.computersculpture.com |
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Hey Andrew, thanks for saving that. I've changed computers since then and
had lost it myself. I've used Peter's advise ever since and have had no more trouble myself. Custom Made Knives and Jewelry by Don Robinson http://home.rgv.rr.com/donrob "Andrew Werby" wrote in message ... "Patricia A. Swan" wrote in message ... Hey, guys. I've been diving through my archives trying to find a specific post with directions on setting stones into pronged settings. I'm pretty positive that it's a Peter Rowe post, but I'm striking out finding it. The technique has the prongs being progressively brought up from the sides instead of being pulled back away from the setting and then pushed back. The post was extremely clear and easy to follow. I've got a friend who is setting 80 cabs and is having problems getting her prongs to seat correctly over the stone and I was going to pass over a copy of my archive of this post and now I *can't locate it*. Does anyone recognize this and have a copy that they can lay their hands on easily? She's got about another two and a half weeks before the big show these cabs are due to go up for sale at. Pat Swan Six Swans Designs -- * Patricia A. Swan, moderator, rec.arts.sf.tv.babylon5.moderated * * newsgroup submission address: * * moderator contact address: * * personal contact address: [Perhaps this is the one:] From: "Don Robinson" Subject: videos on stone setting inst. Date: Wednesday, August 08, 2001 4:00 PM Our moderator, Peter Rowe, sent me the following message when I was learning to set stones. Follow his instructions and I believe you will learn everything you need to set prongs. It has solved all my problems. Here are his instructions to me: Many setters just push prongs over with a flat/blunt ended pushing tool. Not a rocker (which easily slips). I use a tool, sold for that purpose, which is just square steel stock in a graver type handle, who's end is just flat and square across, not polished. I've sanded it slightly concave with a sanding drum to make it even less likely to slip. If the head is strong enough that you can just push a tip without the whole head racking to the side, this works just fine for most setting work. Takes a bit more work than pliers, but it works. If you prefer setting pliers, and they often DO help a lot, then try this: In auto parts type stores, you can get a slim, miniature version of the plumber's channelock type pliers. You know, the type where you can, when the hinge is wide open, slide the jaws closer or farther apart. The full size version is great on plumbing pipes. this little one is made for adjusting ignition parts, and are called ignition pliers, I think. Take the teeth off the jaws, groove, if desired, the upper jaw to fit over a prong. If you like, round over the sides of the lower jaw so it won't leave gashes inside a ring shank... And voila. You've got a setting plier for a lot less money than a traditional one, with a much wider range of sizes it will grip. but you may well not need that either. While simple setting techniques say just put the stone in the seat and bend the tips over the stone, there is another way. Here, you cut a seat, then bend the tips over, with normal needle nose pliers, to the same, or even further degree, that you would with the stone in place, but without the stone in place. Without the stone, you can just grab the tip and bend it cleanly over with small pliers, with the plier jaw maintaining a crisp inner corner to the bend. clean up, with files, burrs, or whatever, the inner corner of the seat under that tip, if it needs it, till it's the same angle as the stone girdle, except slightly tighter (tip bent very slightly too far down) Now grab the entire prong, not just the tip, and bend it back a little bit from it's base, or where it attaches to the upper gallery level of the head. Just a little is enough. Do this to all, and if you've got it right, you can just barely slip the stone into the head despite the fact the tips are already bent over. Now, with anything that can push, a prong pusher, graver handle, side of a plier jaw, your teeth, etc, push the prongs straight towards the stone. They won't go tight, of course, since they spring back, but you can move them most of the way. This is just to take up much of the movement needed, not to tighten the stone. Now grasp the prongs by adjacent (side to side) pairs of prongs, in ordinary pliers, and squeeze them together slightly. They move towards each other, side to side, parallel to the girdle, rather than directly towards the stone. Go around the entire stone this way, each prong being grasped twice, bent first to one side (towards one neighbor), and then towards the other. They'll end up evenly spaced again. But they'll also end up tight to the stone, since in this bending, a slight amount of movement is towards the stone. Since the side to side bending is much more, and is enough to overcome the elastic limits of the prong so it stays bent, the simultaneous bending towards the stone also stays there, without springing back away from the stone. When you're doing this, it is not necessary to get the prongs to bend side to side very much. Often, you're just slightly squeezing the prongs sideways, and it can seem that they haven't moved much or at all, yet when you're done going around the stone, somehow they've all tightened up on the stone a good deal. if needed, go around the stone more than once till the prongs are all nicely snugged up on the stone. This is all very gentle and modest, in terms of pressures used. You ease up on getting things tight and secure, rather than needing to get it all at once, so you don't damage the stone. It's surprising how fast this tightens the prongs on the stone, despite the fact that it seems you're bending the prongs only sideways. If you consider the actual directions the prongs bend, though, you realize that while most of the bending direction is sideways, a small amount of the movement is indeed towards the stone. This method of getting prongs to move towards the stone by moving them side to side is what GIA called the "vector" technique of prong tightening, when they taught it in the stone setting class I took from them way too many years ago. Works very well. It's also often the best way to tighten loose stones in existing jewelry. Since you never push the prong directly towards the stone, the stresses on the stone which might chip it, are much much less than if you simply tried to bend prongs directly towards the stone. And because you can precisely form and shape the seat of the stone without the stone there, unexpected chips from a prong bending in a way you don't anticipate or contacting wrong are much less. For some shapes of stones, like emerald cuts, where seats in the prongs need to be flat planes, rather than what a setting bur cuts, you can define a precise angled seat with files and saws much more easily this way too, since you can get the angles just right without the stone and it's fragile edges being at risk during the bending of the tip. The prong tips are bent slightly too much, so as you tighten the prong, the last bit of the stone to fully contact the seat is the girdle itself, as the prong tip hits the stone first at it's end, not at the girdle. The tip then actually relaxes slightly upwards as you tighten the prong. the girdle is the most fragile, so having the prong contact first slightly up the crown facets is much safer, and insures that in fighting to get that tip all the down flush to the stone you don't break the stone, since this way, it starts out all the way down flush... About the only real downside to this method is that because you have to first bend the prongs back at their base, you may need to clean up (rubber wheel, etc) some ripple or bending marks down on the side of the head. But this seems more than made up for in that you then don't have as much trouble cleaning up the tips themselves, since you can get them mostly right before you insert the stone. Hope this helps. Peter Rowe * Andrew Werby www.computersculpture.com |
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