gemstones in tension settings?

[misaacka]

Greetings, everyone--newbie here. I''ve been hanging out here and learning so much over the past week or so. It''s great to find a place with so many kind, helpful, and knowledgeable folks!

Since visiting PS, I''ve finally discovered tension settings (okay: so I''m a little out of touch in some areas!), and I LOVE the way they look. Most tension stone settings, though, seem designed for diamonds (as e-rings), and I''m not in the market for one of those, but I am interested in some kind of interesting, unusual non-diamond tension-mounted stone. I''ve read somewhere that stones need to have a hardness of 8 to be tension-set and am wondering how hard and fast that is. For example: I''m very drawn to some of the bicolor tourmalines--just thinking about seeing all those shifting colors in a tension setting makes my mouth water! Is something like that out of the question, or should I stick with sapphires, spinel, garnets, and the like? If anyone has any insights or experiences in this area, I''d love to hear from you!

 

[valeria101]

I found beryl, garnet, sapphire and ruby set in Ti tension settings. I guess spinel would do but being a less frequent choice... it just so happens that there are few if any examples. Even if you see just one step back on Mohs scale between sapphrie and tourmaline, that is actually quite a distance (it is not a linear scale).

Any stone should be clean and reasonably well cut (the girdle outline and overall symetry are important)... And it still remains contingent on whether the maker of the setting (assuming they will set the stone, as it is usually done) considers a certain stone appropriate.

A green stone in a tension setting should be a custom cut green sapphire, I guess.

 

[strmrdr]

I would go with a design that looks like a tension setting but actualy has a ring of metal under the stone connection the 2 parts.
It puts a lot less stress on the stone than a tension ring.