How to Make a Ring With Bezel Setting

7/30/2019 How to Make a Ring With Bezel Setting

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How To Make a Ring With Bezel Setting

When my good friend and fellow silversmith,Mat Citrenbaumteaches a jewelry class, he has

his students create a ring from start to finish in the first day. Inspired by this approach, I

decided to create this tutorial to cover a range of techniques.

Getting started: creating the bezel

First, we'll start on our bezel. OurBezel Wire is Fine Silver which

is .999 (it's as pure as it gets) so it's going to be very soft. This is why sterling silver .925 (The

balance is copper to give it it's hardness) is used for jewelry and not fine silver. But, fine

silver is great for bezels because it's easier to form fit to a stone. So, wrap your bezel wire

around your stone. Now, make a line with a Metal Scribe or a Sharpie Marker where you

plan to cut the bezel wire to fit your stone. With yourMetal Shears cut on the line creating a

seam. Make sure both sides of the seam are cut straight. Then file both sides to ensure a

straight seam.

Soldering the bezel

Make sure your seams meet up perfectly flush to one another. Youcan even use Jewelry Pliers to flaten both sides to ensure they meet correctly. Now, to solder

our bezel loop closed. Place your bezel on yourSoldering Pad seam up. With a Brush or

Eye Dropper coat your piece with Flux.The purpose of flux is it, removes oxidation from the

surfaces to be soldered. If oxidation occurs solder will not flow when melted. Now, if your

piece gets too hot, it will oxidize and soldering wont work. You can also melt your piece.

Now that your piece is coated with flux, heat your piece up evenly, using a circular motionwith yourTorch. Now, you will stick feed yourMedium Solder into the seem. Just a little bit

- you will see the solder flow across the seam. You can also cut little pieces of solder from the

wire and place them on the seam as well. Knowing when your piece is hot even to accept

solder and for soldering to work corectly - really becomes feel, and takes time. Don't get

discouraged.

Pickling: to remove oxidation and clean the metal
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Now that your piece is soldered it is also oxidized and what is calledfire scaled. This is where the Pickling Acid comes in. It's important that metal is clean before

it is soldering or any next step. Pickle solutions remove oxidation and flux from metals. So,

Pickle comes in granules which you'll follow the directions a mix with water and put into your

Crock-pot. Pickle works much quicker when heat is added. Hence, the purpose of the crock-

pot. Another thing to know about pickle is : mixing Ferris and non-feris (iron or no iron

based) metals will contaminate your pickle soulution. Silver gold and copper non-ferris but,

steel and nickle ferris, do not mix in the pickle pot.

So, back to the bezel. Using Copper Tongs pick up your freshly soldered bezel and drop it

into the heated pickle pot. For safety you can always quench your piece in a seperate bowl ofwater before puting it into the pickle pot.

Creating the ring

As you wait for your bezel to be cleaned by the pickle before thenext step, you can start cutting out your ring blank. Get yourJeweler Saw equipped with

size #1/0 or #1 Blade. Draw or scribe the shape you desire on your18 Gauge Sterling Silver

Sheet. This will serve as a stencil to cut out. Begin cutting making sure the teeth on the blade

are pointing down using the Bench Pin to hold your piece on (that's the v-shape piece of

wood on the jewelry bench). Remember a jeweler's saw is only cutting on the down strokes.

With an up and down motion, saw perpendicular to sheet, cut following your line. Cutting

isn't easy and you first start you'll break a ton of blades we all do. Even when you get good

you still break some blades, be careful.

Same as the bezel both sides that will be seamed together must befiled straight. While we have the ring still flat now would be a good time to stamp it .925 (or

sterling). The ring blank will need resistence place it on to an Anvil on hard piece of steel.

With your.925 stamp place it where you'd like it -in the center of the ring blank. And with

yourBall-Peen Hammer strike the back of the stamp. Make sure your stamp makes a deep

recesse because, the ring will undergo many more transformations polishing etc. and you

don't want it to disappear. The stamp can be placed back into the .925 and hit again or pivitedand struck at different angles.
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At this point you'll want to file out your saw marks and round the two long edges of your ring

blank so they are not sharp you will be able to get a finished hight polish later.

Forming and soldering the ring

To make your ring round get out yourRing Mandrill and use aRaw Hide or Nylon Mallet to work the flat ring blank around the steel ring mandrill. Bear in

mind you'll be soldering this seam. Don't worry if the ring is not totally round it's more

important that both sides of the seam are flush an parallel and together. Once, you have

achived this put the ring on yourSoldering Pad seam up. With a Brush or Eye Dropper coat

your piece with Flux. And solder seam with medium solder. Then place ring in pickle potusing your copper tongs.

Bringing it all together

As that sits a while you can move back to your bezel. Your bezelneeds a backing so, now get your18 gauge sterling silver sheet. Again using your stone as a

template place the stone on the sheet and trace or scribe a shape bigger than the stone. Take

out you Jeweler Saw and cut out that shape. Now, take yourRaw Hide or Nylon Mallet and

strike the bezel back on an Anvil on hard piece of steel flip your piece over and hit it again

and repeat if necessary. The idea is to make the bezel flat so you can solder the bezel on top of

it.

Next, take your bezel out of the pickle dry it off and slide it on to yourRing Mandrill. This is

to ensure the bezel is round, tap with Raw Hide or Nylon Mallet if necessary. Be careful

though, you don't want to stretch the bezel so that it is too big.

Then, make sure the back of your bezel is nice and flat so it will sitsflat on the bezel back. Because, the next step is going to be soldering them together. File the

back of the bezel flat if necessary. Put the bezel on the bezel backing on yourSoldering Pad.

You don't want to see light through the bezel sitting on the bezel backing. This means your

bezel or your bezel backing is not flat enough. If everything is flat with a Brush or EyeDropper coat your piece with Flux. And solder seam with medium solder as you solder you'll
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see if you are controlling the heat of the properly.The solder will flow traveling around the

circular bezel without disrupting the seam you soldered early on the bezel it self. After quench

then place bezel in pickle pot using your copper tongs.

Now, remove the ring from pickle pot using your copper tongs. Dryit off and hamer in round with the Raw Hide or Nylon Mallet on the Ring Mandrill. Now,

would be a good time for a rough polish on the buffing wheel or polisher. Because there are

going to be spotes on the ring under the bezel that are going to be difficult to get to. So, using

Tripoli Compound by pressing it against a Medium Buff while the polisher is running.

You'll be adding compound to the wheel. Next, you can press the ring itself against the wheel

polishing it, getting all the rough areas you filed down earlier.

Once you have the ring polished up faily well, pull your bezel from the pot and head back to

the bench. Now, your going to cut of the excess material rotating your piece around on the

Bench Pin. After you have it cut out file the rough edges of the bezel. At this point file a

small flat area on the ring right on top where the seam is. This is toward the next step.

Soldering the ring to the bezel

You are now ready to solder the ring to the bezel. Put the bezel onyourSoldering Pad upsidedown. Now using the small flat area you filed on the ring you'll be

able to balance a round ring on the back of a flat bezel. Coat your piece with Flux, make sure

the ring is centered, and solder. If you have been paying attention you are now contenting

with three solder seams creating a fourth. The more solder seams you've created the more skill

you have to become with controlling the heat of the piece, with the Torch as you are

soldering. There are also, different melt temperatures of solder there is Hard, Medium, Soft.

For this piece we were just using Medium. Your piece should be soldered and in the picklepot now.

When your piece is fully pickled, bring it out of the pot. And you'll now have a chance to

polish the outside of the bezel an the inside of the ring.

Setting the stone
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Now you can prepare the bezel to set the stone. With a 3 SidedScraping Tool take off the edge on the inside of the bezel. This allows the material to contour

a much closer fit to the stone when setting the stone. When setting the stone place it into the

bezel cup. Get yourBezel Pusher or Roller and start where you'd like and begin pressing and

rolling. Start lower on the outside of the bezel and work your way around slowly moving

toward the rim of the bezel. Pressing and rolling your way around make even revolutions until

you've gotten the bezel close a hugging the stone. You can use burnishing tools after to shine

and even out the edge.

Clean up and finishing touches

At this stage you're ready to give your new sterling silver ring with around bezel setting a final clean up. First, you can hit anything egregious with Tripoli

Compound and a medium buff on the Polisher. Be mindful of your stone especially if it's a

soft stone. Then, Red Rouge Compound and a soft buff for a high polish.

Your sterling silver ring with a round bezel setting is complete.

There are other final clean up methods including tumblers, steam, toothbrushes, ultrasonic

machines, polish clothes and many more that we wont get into here.

When, I first began making jewelry, many moons ago, I took ametals class at college. The requirements of the teacher, Bill Gilbert, were five different

pieces using an aray of techniques. I met those requirements but, a bit comically, now that I

think back - I also created about 40 rings. Right away I was obsessed with ring making. It

wasn't till much later I realized that - just about everything you do in silversmithing is built

around the circle. So, in my obession I was actaully teaching myself from practical experience

an amazing amount of skills. To me, a ring is probably the best place to start on the road to

fabricating jewelry in precious metals.
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How to Make a Ring With Bezel Setting