I picked a purple agate stone-- admittedly, this was my second pick. My first choice of a green stone that was circular was not working out for me. I decided to make a simple cuff bracelet, because we paid for the material by weight and so not wanting to break the budget by getting a sheet of silver, I opted for 12 gauge silver wire. I annealled, shaped, filed, soldered, and hammered my bracelet-- though it took me 4 times to get the two wires to stay soldered together.
Making the bezel cup to hold the stone was a simple process of wrapping the stone in a thin sheet of silver, measuring the correct length, and then soldering that together. The next step is soldering that ring onto a flat piece of silver sheeting, which proved a challenge as both pieces have to be touching all around in order for the solder to seal it together. Once that was done (second time was the charm there), there was cutting and filing of the sheet to make its edges line up with the bottom edge of the silver ring. The teacher was able to whip this out in a matter of minutes. For us newbies, it took about an hour.
The final soldering is attaching the bezel cup to the jewelry piece. Again, you have to make sure that there is no daylight between the two pieces you are trying to attach together. It took me 4 times again to solder the bezel to the bracelet-- one side was not as flat as the other!
Then buffing the bracelet and finally, adding the stone into the bezel and pressing the top edges of the bezel wall into the stone to hold it in place.
All day to make one piece of jewelry, start to finish. I am sure if that I had my own studio I would get faster.... Hey! Since I have no job at the moment, maybe I need to start making jewelry and stuff to sell! I wonder how many rings and bezelled bracelets I would have to make just to get my money back from buying the torch....
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