Jewelry Project GO FLY A KITE
3
Sand the back of the piece with
the medium sanding sponge.
This leaves a nice brushed silver
back plate. Hallmark and quality
stamp the back now, remembering
to stamp somewhere behind where
the stone will lie. If you stamp
outside of the stone area, it will mar
the front of the piece.
After retrieving the soldered bezel
from the pickle, rinse and again
confi rm the angles with your fl at
nose pliers. This will help you avoid
getting those dreaded pinched
corners when setting the stone.
Then lay the stone inside the bezel
again and check for fi t.4
Because some stones look
absolutely symmetrical but
are not, they may be off a mm or
two, which will be disastrous if
you solder your bezel on upside
down. (And how do I know this?)
My mantra is “You never knew how
big a mm is until you make jewelry!”
To make sure your stone fi ts the
bezel, fl ip the bezel over to make
sure it fi ts either way. If it doesn’t,
mark along the top of the bezel that
fi ts with the black Sharpie. This will
remind you that this side shouldface up. The Sharpie will burn off
cleanly during soldering.
This stone was off by 1 mm on one
side, and the bezel would not have
fi t if I’d soldered it upside down.
Sand the front of the back plate
with the sanding sponge for a
beautiful sanded fi nish. No need to
pickle because you have sanded
the front of the piece and it is clean.
Solder the bezel down with medium
solder, pickle and rinse.THE LITTLE DETAILS
5-5a
While everything is
pickling, form two
spirals out of some extra 16 gauge
round scrap wire. This will be
soldered onto the front of the piece
and back below the bail. The back
should be as nice as the front, though
not necessarily show as much detail.
Every time people look at my jewelry,
they turn it over, so this is a nice
surprise on the back. I bet they do
the same to your pieces. Draw a bead
on the end of the wire for the front,
and lightly fi le the opposite ends of
the wire to a point so it will form a
pretty ending to the spiral.
Flux both spirals and cut some
small pallions of solder, about 1mm,and melt them onto the backs of
the spirals. When you do it this way,
there will be no unsightly solder
blobs on the back plate because
solder’s favorite thing to do is to
hide in the seams. Pickle, rinse.
Lay one spiral on the front of
the piece, and mark where the two
balls will fi t on either side of tail of
the spiral. Mark these with a center
punch which will leave a divot on
the metal. Enlarge these divots with
the diamond ball bur, but don’t cut
through the metal.
Cut two small ¼ inch pieces of
sterling wire and heat until they
ball up. These are the little balls for
either side of the piece. Pickle to
clean and set aside.
Cut two extremely small pieces of
medium solder and place these into
the round depressions you made
with the ball bur. Solder the spiral
onto the back plate and at the same
time the solder will melt into the
round depressions.6
Retrieve the back plate from the
pickle, rinse, and dry. Place the
little balls into the soldered divots,
and they should lie on each side of
the tail of the spiral yet not touch3 4 5
44 LAPIDARY JOURNAL JEWELRY ARTIST
42 Erickson_GoFlyAKite_mayjune20.indd 44 3/16/20 3:45 PM