Can you believe it has been a month since I embarked on this journey! Time is just flying by. I have been diligently applying myself to the projects and sometimes I do have to repeat the projects. If I was to make any major mistakes or layouts that are not acceptable I was asked to start again, and its from these mistakes you learn a whole bunch!
The double row 3 claw pave filet circle really was a challenge for me! I started the task three times and just could not get the spacing of the stones right, what made it hard for me initially I thought was just the spacing of the stones are much smaller and that there's very little room for error and walking the dividers was a challenge.
Being taught to self analyse what's going on was something I learnt a lot of during Standout stone setting courses so during the evenings I had some time to ponder.
I'm thankful for CAD which helps me illustrate and understand more of what might be going on. What I believe I found out was, when the internal circle is small, the metal left over by the prongs are always going to be small. Increasing to a larger diameter and subsequently larger stones sizes also yielded slightly larger / longer claws ready to split. But as I make this hypothesis there must be an optimum layout as if the spacing between gets too big, you will likely be able to fit another stone in your arrangement. The most space you will ever get between stones in a tight layout is when they are set side by side in a straight line.
Another observation is that sometimes coloured gemstones and cubic zirconia's are not always cut in the standard proportions of diamonds. They have thick or uneven girdles! So your ball bur needs to travel down deeper in order to let the stone be seated. The rule of thumb is typically 2/3rd of the ball bur, but you need to adjust it depending on the stones you have.
When pressing the stones in to seated, be aware that diamonds are harder and sharper and will tend to bite the metal more than gemstones and CZs. I'm having some issues at the moment with my stones not locking down, meaning they can rotate if you bead the stone unevenly! Ok thats enough thoughts from me until the next post!