jewlery making tutorial?

[velouriaL]

So I know the basics... that sometimes pieces are made from a one-of-a-kind mold, and sometimes they''re assembled from pre-cast findings, but I don''t really understand anymore than that how jewelry is made. I browse around the stuller website, trying to figure out how bezels are attached to shanks and whatnot... and I can''t, for the life of me, figure out how etienne perret rings (like this one:

) are made. My boyfriend claims that it''s actually a really complicated piece, no matter how simple it looks.

Anyone know of a brief little tutorial on the nitty-gritty of how jewelers go about making the things I drool over?

 

[valeria101]

Date: 3/16/2005 9:30:45 AM
Author: Feydakin

And for the record, one man''s hard is another''s easy...

Sure that. If the boyfriend does not make jewelry for aliving, he might find this difficult. A jeweler making this model often would find it easy. The image comes from the website of Etienne Perret, but he is not the only maker of this setting. At least one more Pricescope ring in that style was made by another jeweler on short notice.

Years after I''ve last touched a piece of gold, this would be really hard for me. My jeweler considers the model relatively easy to make.

 

[velouriaL]

He (the boyfriend) is pretty good, but out of practice. He took 2 jewelery classes a year for about 3 years, but most of his work was actually small objects (like a tiny box that look like a slug but covered in gypsey set CZs) or conceptual pieces (a band ring with beaver hairs growing out of it), not really wearable jewelry (although an EXGIRLFRIEND once met Yoko Ono at an art opening and Yoko offered to buy the pendant she was wearing (that he made) off of her...).

He understands the goldsmithing stuff pretty well, and I have a pretty solid grasp on the gems side of it... But I''m really interested in at least understanding how things work!

Feydakin - I saw that thread... and I think I understand the way channel setting works. I alos THINK I understand pegheads and basket setting. Like, I get how this shank works:

You put the peghead it and solder (or whatever...) to make it stick, then set the gem.
But I don''t understand how premade shanks like this one work:

and I don''t understand how this bezel becomes part of a ring:

Is it for shallow stones? Or is it an open bezel?

I guess what I would really like to see is a run down on all the basic findings and how they come together to make a piece of jewelery... but maybe that would take a whole book!