Why I Cut Every Bezel By Hand

 When you look at a finished ring or pendant, the part you notice least is the bezel. It's the thin silver wall that wraps around the stone and holds it in place. But after six years at the bench, I can tell you that it is one of the most important parts of your jewelry.  It's the part that tells you whether a piece is only pretty or genuinely well made.

What a bezel does

A bezel surrounds the stones edge, and the top rim is pressed against the stones curve to secure it. Done well, it protects the stone and sits flush.

No two stones are the same. Even a cabochon that looks perfectly oval will have slight differences, such as a shoulder that's a little steeper on one side.  I hand select my gemstones from lapidary suppliers that I trust, and part of what I love about stones is exactly this individuality.

That's also why I don't use pre-made bezel cups. They are made to fit an average stone, and your stone is never average. When a stone is put into a setting that wasn't made for it, you get gaps, uneven pressure, and a bezel that has to be forced into place.

How I do it

1. I wrap a thin strip of fine silver bezel wire snugly around the stones edge, following every curve.

2. I cut the strip to the proper length. Then I shape it around the stone again to check the fit.

3. I solder the seam, taking the time to make sure that the ends meet perfectly so that the seam will be nearly invisible.

4. I check the fit again.  This is the time that I make corrections if there are any loose areas or if the bezel is too tight. Sometimes that means starting all over from the beginning.

5. I file down any parts of the bezel and/or corners that are too high for the stone and check the fit again.

Now I'm finally ready to attach it to a sterling silver backplate, do the final filing, sanding, and polishing, and set the stone!

Fitting a bezel to each stone takes more time than dropping one into a pre-made cup. In this case, I feel that the slower way is the right way. When you wear something that I've made, I want the stone to look as if it was always meant to be there. 

If you'd like to see the pieces that I've made this way, visit my shop at CK Metal Designs. You can also contact me through the shop to have a custom order made just for you.

Cat 

See Me In Person!

If any of my readers are in the South Florida area, come and see me and my jewelry this Sunday September 27. I will be at the Fifth Avenue Shops in Boca Raton at 2000 N Federal Hwy. There will be over 60 vendors participating, and since it’s the first Sunday of the season there will be raffles and activities for the kids. 

We will be open from 9:00 until 1:00PM. As a show special, I will be making personalized sterling silver nugget necklaces for only $25, including a 16 or 18 inch cord necklace.

Cat

Why Is Silver Getting So Expensive?

 I received an email from The Capital Horizon, which is actually an investor website, (no idea why I’m on their mail list, I have no money to invest) but it had this interesting factoid in it. 

“Here is a fact most [people] have never heard. 

Most of the world's silver does not come from silver mines. 

It comes out of the ground as a side effect of mining gold, copper, lead, and zinc.

Which means when the world needs more silver, the mining industry cannot simply produce more of it.”

So, I looked it up. Only 30% of the world's silver comes from silver mining. The other 70% is recovered, as it said in the email, as a secondary metal while mining for other resources. That's why mining companies can't just produce more silver. They have to wait until it's economically feasible to mine the other metals so that they can get the byproduct silver. I never knew that.

About 30% is from lead and zinc mines, 25% from copper mines, and 15% is from gold mines. I guess that’s why silver just keeps getting more and more expensive, plus the fact that it’s so in demand now for both data centers, electronics, and batteries, among other things. Silver is also the largest cost component in solar panels.

Mexico, China and Peru are the top silver producing countries, with Mexico having the largest mine. The Juanicipio mine in Zacatecas, Mexico produces around 17-18 million ounces of silver per year. I would take a trip to Mexico just to see that mine. I love Mexico anyway.

Now you know more about silver than you ever thought you wanted to know. I think it is all very interesting, though.

So, buy my stuff, folks, so that I can buy more silver and keep on making beautiful things.🤣 The link to my shop is CK Metal Designs. 

Cat

 

What Is the Difference Between Cast and Fabricated Jewelry?

Cast jewelry is sterling silver or gold melted and poured into a mold. By using the same mold over and over, you can get consistency in your pieces. Fabricated jewelry is built by hand from gold or sterling silver sheet and wire one piece at a time, so there will be little differences in the pieces, even when you try to make them the same.

I happen to prefer fabrication. To me, fabrication is a process of making decisions. Every cut, every solder join is a choice that could have gone another way. And sometimes I change my mind in the middle of a piece and decide to do something different with it.  That is what you are holding when you hold one of my handmade pieces of jewelry.

Here's how to tell the difference.

Seams: Fabricated pieces are soldered together, so you may see faint seam lines where one piece of metal meets another. I make them as invisible as I can, but sometimes there's no way around it. Cast pieces are poured as one solid form, so joins are usually invisible, since the whole piece came out of the mold at once.

Consistency: A cast pair of earrings often matches almost perfectly, down to the millimeter, since they came out of the same mold. A fabricated pair will have small variations from piece to piece, because a person made each one by hand. The pair of earrings on my bench this week varied by about a half millimeter in length, but it is not noticeable when they are being worn. That small difference is what hand fabrication looks like up close.

Casting and fabrication are just different ways of making jewelry, with different skills required. Each maker has their own reasons for preferring one over the other.

When you buy fabricated jewelry, like mine, you are buying the time, skill, and attention that went into shaping raw metal into something that didn't exist in that form before. Every piece that I make starts as flat sheet and a length of wire and is built from that. 

Now that you know what to look for, check out some of the jewelry next time you're shopping, and see if you can tell how it was made.

Cat

Hi Again!

 Well, now it's really been a long time since I attended to this blog! 

In 2019, I was just getting started in silversmithing and I was complaining about the cost of silver rising to $16.95 per ounce. LOL!!! What I would give for that price now! The price of silver at this date is hovering between $60 and $70 per ounce. That is the spot price for raw silver out of the ground. When I buy silver sheet and wire, there is a fabrication charge added, which adds about $20-$25 per ounce, so I'm paying close to $100/ounce when I buy silver to work with. Ouch! It really hurts when I make a mistake and have to scrap a project. I practically cry over the wasted silver. 😣 I've been finding ways to melt some of it and use it for other projects though, so that helps a bit.

I want to resurrect this blog and use it to tell you some interesting things about silver, jewelry, and my work. I hope that you will find it entertaining. Let me know in the comments if there is a topic that you would like me to write about.

That's it for now, short post today and I'll work on something more over the weekend. Talk to you soon!

Cat

www.ckmetaldesigns.com