Metalsmith Newsletter

These are a few of my jewelry designs that all called for different setting styles. Having a setting background allows me to plan the setting right at the beginning of the design stage.

Setting is a separate trade for the reason that it is complex to master and requires diligent and continuous practice to keep up the hand skills.

It is a difficult skill to teach. How do you explain or even show in a video hand motion and pressure or where a cut is “just far enough”?

But just because it requires discipline and effort is no reason not to start learning, because every master setter that ever lived started from knowing nothing.

And once one has grasped the basics, that is already enough knowledge to set 50% of the jewelry made today.

Many years ago I had a jewelry shop in the far northern part of Botswana. There was no possibility to send my jewelry pieces to a setter.

The same happened when we were based on the island of St Maarten, where we were on time constraints to complete custom orders.

So I was able to complete my commissions in-house, which saved me and my customers both time and money.

That is why I highly recommend that you attempt to master the basics of setting. A good beginning is to start with prong and bezel setting. Once you have these under your belt, you can move onto pavé, flush (gypsy) and channel setting.



For that purpose, I made a tutorial to show the Basics of Prong Stone Setting.

General Setting Tools:

We have gravers, pushers, pliers, burrs and frazers Optivisors and hand held loupes, amongst many others.
The best is to practice on cheap stones like Cubic Zirconias and test pieces of jewelry.
Often, when I have a setting job I am uncertain of, I will first do the job in silver, just to get the feel of it, before tackling the actual job.

Drill-Str8 Mini Bench Drill Press integrates into your jewelers bench top allowing you to instantly transform you flex shaft hanging motor into a rigid and accurate miniature drill press and back again to normal flex shaft operations within seconds. The Drill-Str8 helps with drilling accurate holes needed for gemstone setting.

Here is a free Quick and Straight Forward Collet tutorial, to practice your prong setting skills on.

To make it easier finding all the newly available tutorials, we've added a clearly marked section listing of new tutorials as a quick overview under
Jewelry Making Class List

Keep on learning and expanding your jewelry making skills. Putting any frustrations and challenges aside, always remember why you started in the first place......

My very best regards,

Hans Meevis