A Gold Jade Ring and two Composite Stones.

This is a ring I made for Mort.
Set with a Canadian Nephrite Jade, one of the toughest stones that I have made a cab out of recently. I hammered this stone it to the ring hard, and it laughed at me.
I really like the olive green.
A real macho man colour.
A Canadian customer of mine John , gave me a small slab, perfect for making jewellery stones out of, and I am going to cut some more shapes out of it and make some more 'Man Jewellery' soon.

Now for the wimp side of me :)
This CZ, a composite of the unfinished picture shown in the previous post.
I cut the pavilion in a stepped round cab.
Like a circle at 42º and then a circle at 50º.
This gives it that watery look from the top.
The same effect can be achieved if one facets a normal brilliant pavilion and then you cut the crown a 'buff top', namely a cabochon smooth top.
It makes all the flat facets look like they being viewed under water.
Very cool effect.

And this is a composite of pale blue CZ laminated to a dark blue CZ.

In this one, like the previous one, I cut the table larger.

This gives me a reflection of five gold balls, instead of four, as was shown in the aquamarine in the previous post.

Ok, reflection of five balls is strictly speaking wrong.

The center ball is the real ball, the others are reflections of the middle one.

We learn as we go along.....

And, if I might say so, this is the first optical illusion gem I have made.

There is a whole realm of possibilities.......

Of Cutting, Carving and Composite Gemstones

I have been hard at work cutting round stones. Anything from 3mm to 6mm.
I like round stones. They easy to make tubes for, they work well with most designs and they don't require lots of real estate....small ones I mean.
But well cut small stones are surprisingly difficult to get. On the Internet or from dealers. And I mean WELL CUT ones. With all the facets and meets correct.
So I went through my small rough and set to work. Major mission stuff.
Sapphire, tourmaline, spinel, garnet.
Lots of sweat, many cricks in the back and pains in the neck, literally and figuratively.


This is a Nigerian Aqua I carved -6.04 ct, a replacement for one sold.
Next week sees me carving a ring in wax for this stone.

This is a tourmaline I cut and carved. 4.04 ct. To replace the one sold on my web front page.

Also going into a ring of some design or other.

Friggin' thing chipped on the top left hand corner at polishing, so I had to be creative in cutting and design.

This is different. .o5ct diamond embedded in an aquamarine. A composite Aqua, actually.

What I did was to drill a semi hole into a piece of aqua and then put a gold ball or small diamond in the polished concave.

Like this , as is in this case of an amethyst.

Half drilled holes all polished. The tops will all still be polished.

Then a clear polished section is glued on.

This is difficult.

In this picture, the top has moved and the resin is visible in the window.

No good. Do again.

I use Hxtal Nyl resin. It takes 5 days to harden.

But when it hardens it is stronger and harder that Hercules' balls, I promise.

And once hardened, I facet the stone.

I put 4 main facets on the crown at 35 degrees and 4 break facets at 50 degrees to the girdle.

Lo and Behold!

Four balls appear. ( Nothing to do with Hercules)

And when the stone is moved, the balls roll around in the half round polished area and do this sort of tremble -stroke- vibrate thing.( this writing sounds seedy, but I promise I am merely describing what happens )

Quite amazing, and I promise, something I never anticipated.

And I facet the pavilion in the normal 24 facets at 42 degrees and 45 degrees, which gives the darker ring around the quadrupled diamonds, in this picture.

This is a picture aligning the center hole to the general stone, prior to faceting.

I used a native cut stone as rough.

And this is a picture of my dog, called Popcorn, because he likes to swim in a bowl of fresh popcorn when Anne makes it. (often)

He is actually an Australian cockatiel, who guides me in my gem cutting endeavours

and is pivotal to my equilibrium, just like Anne is.

Three Rings and Furtheration of the Time Tower

I finished this ring today. Set with a .85ct diamond and the tube in white gold with little diamonds set in the fused sides.

This is a sort of stock ring for me. I cast the basic shank and then I fit, in this case, titanium that has been heat blued.
The dolphin is then riveted through the titanium and the shank, holding the whole affair together.
I have, in the past, used that shank with enamel as the background and elephant and birds as the motives.

She liked her ring plain and simple.I thusly made it such.

Oo-Rah! The time tower marches forward. The wood is Cherry wood.
The sides are copper. The corners feet are brass.

In the center of the Time tower, there will be a rheostat that will control the intensity of the lights. On the top of the light is a copper plate with a brass ring and a clear lens.
I just love those light bulbs. I buy them at Ace ( can you believe it!) They so old valve-ish.
That is why I made the bottom brass fitting to hide the obviously modern screw fittings.
The sides are still going to be adorned with a brass gate kind of a thing-a-ma-bob.

\
I didn't want to have the corners of the Time Tower standard, so I carved a wax model and the cast it into silver as the master. It was quite big, about 100 grams and it didn't fit into a standard vulcanising mould so I moulded it in Silicone.
I solder the sprues on and then I make a perspex box the right size.
Then I drill a hole in the removable front part so that the main sprue fits in tightly.

And I 'solder' ( or should the be braze, or stick?) the front on with injection wax. That holds everything rigid and is easy to remove when necessary.

I use a two part Silastic 'J' silicone from Dow Corning or Zero D's clear silicone. Both are very good. This stuff is actually white and then the 'hardener' is green. That way you can see if it is mixed well. The stuff looks like creamy mint chocolate, and in fact when they make those chocolate adverts on TV where the chocolate pours over something, it is actually silicone.
Brown silicone. Delicious.
I digress.

And then they are injected ,

and cast.
For casting material, I just buy brazing rods. $10 per pound.
They work real good and they very yellow.
KISS, you know.

Clear The Decks

Ok, so this blog was actually started as a diary of everything that I make.
These following pictures are of jewellery that I have made that I have not posted.
So I have to post them for my personal record, so to speak.
Vasbyt...




As I have said before, these are very popular.....

St Maarten dangles.

White gold ring for a local lady.

Turquoise and silver.

18ct folded and hammered ring.

Sun pendant with larimar.

Stones from a Bauxite mine in the Suriname.

Colour change synthetic corundum. in 14kt.

A Titanium Pendant, Spessertite and the Time Tower

This pendant sold over the Internet last week.

Even though it's not new work, I think it is some of my more original work.

It took four attempts to carve a shape of St Maarten out of larimar.

The colour is actually deeper than in the photograph.

I made the surround out of 18kt gold tubing and titanium wire.

believe me, you can break a poep-string drawing that stuff.

A Hidi can be found here on how to make such material.

This is my latest faceted and carved stone I have finished

A 10.45ct Spessertite garnet.

I dop the stone, then I basic facet the pavilion to 1200 grit.

Then I take the dop out of my machine and carve and polish the design on my bench finished.

The basic method can be found here .

Then I put the stone back in the machine, line it all up again and finish faceting the stone.

The reason I do it that way is because when one carves the stone the carved edges will have tiny chips on them.

Re-faceting the pavilion makes them nice and crisp.

This one is a complete free form. So the rough basically determines what shape it will be.

This is nice spessertite, flawless, from Nigeria.

Next to tourmaline, garnet is my second favourite stone to cut.

Nice and dramatic colour.

I am going to carve and cast a wax ring for it next week or so.

The Time Tower moves forward.

I have added the top panels (still uncompleted) and I made the gear train.

This is a side view

I made some moulds from the nylon gears that came out of the printer that the Gear Gun was made out of.

I took a chance. I had no idea if nylon, (or if that is the material it is made out of) could be vulcanised.

And lo and behold, it took the heat easily.

After I cast the gears I made two side shaft holders.

I cut two pieces of brass flat stock, bolt them together, draw the basic design on them and file the hell out of them.

And Boing! one cool 'gear train' .

Ok, boing might not the absolute right word, because it took a couple of days to finish.

Anyway, it looks Victorian and steampunk-ish.

A Choker, a Pendant and the Time Tower ( of course)

This is a 18kt choker that I made for René with her gold and diamonds.
Making this piece took quite a long time, because there are lots of rings to be made.
There are thirteen rings in the center part in which the diamonds are set.
They all had to be centered and soldered and then 3 carats of old cut diamonds had to be pavé set in them.

Setting that kind of diamond is always a mission.
I call them rovals. ( round and oval)

Fat girdles, razor girdles, high crowns, low crowns, they got them all.
Sometimes sentimental value can cause grey hairs and mightily stretch the patience.

Anyway, the job came out nice and I didn't bust any stones setting.

This is a titanium pendant with a hollow gold pear shape and white gold twist wire around it.

A gift from him to her.

It is VERY dangerous for a guy to design jewellery for his wife without her knowing. A little bit like buying her clothes or a hand bag or lipstick. Trust me, I know

Very delicate territory.

I think she will like it though.

The Time Tower continues. I am actually further than this picture shows.

Still a loooong way to go, though.

I made the third face out of 1 brass layer, a second brass layer and 1 layer of titanium.

A bit like Photoshop..........

The clock is only printed paper, like I said in my previous post.

It's all still rough and ready, unpolished and all.

When I start a complicated project like this, or in jewellery, I never really know where I am going to end up.

I sort of bumble along and often I have to make a U turn and when I come to a fork, I take it.

Just kidding, I read that somewhere. The fork part, I mean.

I have about 50 hours of work in it so far.

Earrings, a Pendant and Furtheration of the Time Tower

A new design.

A set of titanium earrings with the shape of St. Maarten in 18kt gold.

I must say that the blue titanium map jewellery sells very well.

I would not hesitate to suggest that any 'smith should have this type of model in their inventory.

The shape of the place they are in, I mean, not titanium per sé.

Larimar cab in a sun pendant. What can I say? It is the Caribbean, mon.

Made for John, as a surprise gift to his wife.

The Time Tower advances.... I like making projects like this.

I think it is going to be in the 300 hour range of work. Nice and comfortable.

I made two doors at the bottom which can open and close.

The empty spaces in the doors and sides will have glass in.

The front is still going to get a clock in as well.

This will be the main view, but I have to make the side clocks and doors and windows before I can see what the 'main' clock will look like.

Rest assured that it will have blued titanium in it.

I have complete freedom to do what I like since this is not an order...

This is one of the clock sides that I just printed a piece of paper of the actual face (maybe) that I am going to put in.

The blue/green is patinaed copper that I coloured with Rio's green Patina.

As in the windows below, the side body is made of three layers.

that is, brass, copper and brass again.

The front panel is pierced out to show the patinaed copper behind it.

The whole catastrophe is held together with copper nuts and brass bolts that I make.

The clock will have a bubble glass cover. That is , if I can find it on the 'net...

My Gear Gun took six months of spread--- out---- time.

This one should be the same, me thinks......

A Ring, a Bangle and the Time Tower.

This is a 18kt yellow and white gold tourmaline and diamond ring.
I like making rings that lean towards the so-called 'art' genre.


This is a yellow and white gold hook and hinge bangle.
Celebrate the ocean waves and all that stuff.
Anyway, that was the brief.
Came out nice, though, and looked very good on Rebecca.

Don't laugh just yet.
This is my latest steam punk project.
It is something called the Time Tower.
Ultimately, it will be a wall light with two lights either side of the tower.
It is going to have three clocks in the top section, and a steam movement in the middle section.
The chassis is made out of 6mm brass stock.
I have been making the windows.

The windows are made out of three different sections of brass and copper sheet.
They will have glass in the center.

They fit together to make a 'window frame'. Trust me, it is true.
I hand make all the brass and copper nuts and bolts.
I have a vague idea where I am going with this piece
That's the nice part with fantasy work.
You can have a vague direction and still arrive at your destination.
A little bit like going nowhere and all the roads still lead to the kings castle.

The Gear Gun is Completed

Finished---at least to this point.

With this kind of project, one can easily overwork a piece.

There is always more detail that can be made.

Always another thingamabob that can be added.

So I decided to stop at this point.

Everything is polished and sealed with a sealer.

The four brass tubes are actually custom made penlight battery holders.

When the red trigger button is pressed, all the gears in the handle turn.

.

There is actually a small DC motor in the barrel and on the copper dome the first two coiled silver electrical inputs can be seen. This motor drives the gear train.

The second coiled silver conductors go to the trigger button.

Testing the heft.

And the balance........


This is actually where the gear gun comes from.
It is the gear system from a printer machine that a buddy of mine was trashing.

I never just trash something. I first take it apart,THEN I trash it.

Coming up next is a brass/copper clock and light combination still in the steam punk genre.

Long live Steam Punk

Anne's Birthday Presents

Today is Anne's birthday. I made this ring for her.
This is an event of no small significance in the Meevis household.
Planning for this event normally starts four or so months before the due date.
Design decisions.
Cost decisions
At what time must Hans start the work decisions.
That kind of stuff

This is her design, and believe me, she knows EXACTLY what she wants, so for a day or two I get the micro management treatment deluxe. Here to long, there to short. This to high that to small.
Eventually, however, a design is produced that is nice and certainly different.
Anticlastic shank with mokumé-gane and micro diamond pavé all in 18kt gold.

Not, of course, forgetting the vanity mirror, also for this birthday
http://hansmeevis.blogspot.com/2009/05/annes-vanity-mirror.html

Whew, that's it for this year.

Bangle, a Ring and Pendants

This is an asymmetrical pearl bangle I made for one of my favourite customers, Lynda.
The bangle required smooth and fused sections for the design, and I was most careful not to over fuse on a smooth surface.
The the fusing texture is very strong visually. It very easily overrules the smooth if to much is layered on.
This one worked nicely, me thinks.

This is a ring I made for Janet which is fused 18kt gold set with diamonds, ruby and sapphire.
If I had to associate myself with a style, then this is it.
I seriously like making designs like this.

I made two shapes of St Maarten. Again. They sell well.
Titanium background, 18kt white gold background and fused 18kt yellow gold.

The Gear Gun Proto-Type

On the one side of our galaxy are the race known as the Barbarians.
A carnivorous reptilian species that think of human beings as food.
On the other side is us--the food source.
In the middle are the outsiders, a inter galactic task force that has been sent here from other galaxies to prevent the destruction of the human race.
They are slowly loosing the battle.
But one thing that can change everything is the
GEAR GUN.
I was tasked to make this weapon by an emissary of the Galactic task force,who arrived one day at my doorstep.
He pleaded to me and told me money was not the problem,,,,
He asked if the weapon could be finished as soon as possible
Indeed, I told him of the many difficulties,
the philosophy and justification for making such a weapon.
the concept, and how it will destroy that what it is aimed at.
the engineering, the power curves, the art of focusing..
and
the action,--- such destruction in the wrong hands...
Keep in mind that one has to very careful in dealing with the outsiders, because, while they never lie, they dissemble, evade, subtly misrepresent and willfully misunderstand.
Sometimes they contrive to give one an unambiguous impression of their future course of action while in fact intending to do exactly the opposite.
I once asked them why they are like that and they said they learnt the methodology from earth's politicians. I thought it prudent not to question further.
However, then he put gold bars and diamonds on the table. And they were of such quantity and quality, that it made sure that I could do nothing but build and design to their demand.
So I have been hard at work finishing the production model. And full production is imminent.
Already, proto-type copies sent to the galactic front are proving very successful in battle conditions.

This is the proto type still unfinished. All the components are assembled and ready but final finishing must still take place.
The first model had two power packs, but under battlefield conditions it was deemed necessary to add two more.
More Barbarians were killed per shot with more power.

This is a view of the outside side. This particular model is right handed.
The various power-feed trans-curves conductors can be seen.

The four brass tubes are the power transducers that feed power to the individual gears. This determines what the gun will fire, from plasmic rays to micro needles to the anti matter beam.

This is a production shot of the optical firing system being fitted.

Promotional poster showing the gear gun firing in it's plasma mode
A comprehensive list of systems will be printed in the instruction manual, coming soon.

Long live Steam Punk

Anne's Vanity Mirror

It is Anne's birthday soon, and , amongst other things (ha ha ) she wanted me to make her a new mirror. The old one was pretty well finished, after twenty five years.


I made this one, under her 'guidance' out of brass stock and silver.



The back is chased with a silver motive.

It folds upwards as well.

Fun stuff to make

Some Here and Some There

I know, this is not really original. But I think that out of the many rings that I have made, she just LOVED it. Much more than much more complicated ones I have made. And that is all good.
A bright shiny person and a bright shiny ring.
'Nuff Said.


So did he. A remake. A nice ring for a nice guy.
I'm happy....

She brought in old gold and I made her this ring with her stones and gold.
With all my experience, I have actually not ever made a ring like this.
Similar, yes, but not like this.
Now those ten diamonds set in the bars are one pointers. They are a bitch to set.
With a microscope, the bitch is removed. ( this is a term of expression, not any chauvinism)
At my ancient age of 53, I could not set them without a microscope.
With a 'scope, it is ridiculously easy.
This is known as the vector of technology and crossing of age.....

Carved Rose Quartz Spinning Ring

A new commissioned spinning ring.
The main stone is a carved and faceted Rose Quartz.
Rose Quartz is always slightly milky, and I love that.
I has a soft misty look. I carved the pavilion so that there were star flashes that had a diffused look to them.
From the technical point, I first facet the stone on my gem cutting machine until 1200 grit.
Then I remove it from the tang. ( the thing that holds the dop and stone)
Then I carve and polish the stars into it.
Then I put it back into the tang and finish faceting the stone


The center stone is a 5mm tourmaline set in a carved collet.
The oblong stone is a rhodolite garnet that I cut into a Wilf Ross rectangular cut.
I love that pattern . It is a brilliant oblong that is far better than a barion cut.
Mind you, the barion works very well with diamonds, but the Wilf Ross works better with lower RI stones. This is my opinion, admittedly.
These rings are very precise and complicated to make.
It takes me about three days of concentrated work, because I did not have to cut the garnet and tourmaline.
Otherwise it is four days work.
I set ten diamonds pavé and then I carve the sides of the spinning bezel so that the flat sides are more interesting.
The ring worked well on her hand and she did love it.
And I am happy with this one.
I like the colour thread. Pale pink, strong pink and dark red work well, in my opinion.
And it catches the eye when it spins...

The Gear Gun Goes Forward

I have been receiving regular GEM's. (Galactic E Mails) from my Outsider friends.
Mostly, they are concerned as to how far my gear gun manufacture is progressing.
It is a problem for me, because they don't understand the concept of money, payment of rent and the purchase of MacDonald's hamburgers.
I try to tell them that I have to take time off from development of the Gear gun to earn my daily sustenance.
They don't understand and press upon me to complete this weapon with dedicated haste.
I have, at great expense to my well being, done so.

The power unit in the middle has been fitted, tested and found to meet all their (Outsider) specifications.
The chocked conducer barrel has been machined and focuses the gear-beam to military specification.
So far so good.

This is a picture of the energy unit capacitory discharge, which meets, and exceeds in fact, the outsiders parameters for power and beam acquisition.
Typically, the orange ball is the last an enemy alien warrior sees before he/she is removed from this world and shunted to the here-after.

The other side of the gun reveals more of the plasma gear drive system.
Each different gear adds a different flavour to the gun.
Depending on their rotation they can produce a devastating slew of neutrinos, or, if the gunner wishes, destroyer beams from the nano atom range to the asteroid range.
A powerful weapon indeed.


And this, my friends, is only one of the planets that my Outsider friends are up against.
Fighting for their lives. And Earths...
Let us all hold hands and pray that I succeed, and that the gun becomes the weapon to liberate our earth from this sickness, this disease, this horror, that is approaching us.
Long live Steam Punk....

A Ring and a Flower

This is a wide repousse ring made out of 18kt yellow and white gold.

I set .35ct diamonds in it and she weighs 15 grams. That is my target weight.

My latest 'gier' (craze) is to make some flowers out of metal.

I saw this method in a video, (see my previous post).

This one I made out of niobium.

I bought Reactive Metals starter kit in Niobium some time ago, along with their Micro Anodizer. A nice machine, I might add..

And I made only this pendant with it.

The problem is that although niobium is nice to work with, and has an amazing colour range, those colours are somewhat garish. That is why the pendant above is somewhat muted green.

But it suited the laminated CZ that I made first. And this one sold quite quickly, which proves to me another theory I have.

It is the visual or emotional aspect of jewellery that sells it, not necessarily the intrinsic value.

The fact that it was a man made stone, or that it was an exotic , relatively inexpensive material meant nothing to my customer.

It was the visual impact that she liked. And for that she was prepared to pay my price.

Which is great from and artistic point of view, because it broadens the pallet of metals I can use. And at the same time knowing that I have a good chance of being paid, even if the piece takes a hundred hours to finish.

And I am quite tired of gold, in one sense.

At $900 an ounce it limits a goldsmiths creativity.

You can't just plonk down a design that is going to weigh 80 grams. The cost is too high. And then trying to work super light takes much more time and labour, again pushing up your costs.

Ahem...I am teaching my self photo shop.

Or rather, I am being taught by all the tutorials available on the net.

Anyway, making a flower in niobium makes more sense. From the colour point of view.

This one was coloured at about 70 volts in a electro cleaning solution.

It is very easy, because I first electro clean the piece and then just reverse the polarity and anodize it in the same solution.

A Ring, A Rose and a Fish Dish

This is a 18kt yellow and white gold ring I made a good while ago. It came in for sizing, and it was a good opportunity to photograph it properly .

I have not been able to get such nice blue Tourmaline material ever again. The photo really does not do it justice.

A complicated design indeed.

Yet, for all it's business, I works well on her hand.

Yesterday there was a video on Ganoksin on How to Make a Rose by Luis Moreno.

So I made a smaller test one out of silver last night.

I think it came out quite nice.

Now, if only I had known about this technique in my early years. Back in 1981, I was learning jewellery making from Shane, my journeyman.

So this rich rose farmer walks into the shop and orders some jewellery to be made.

We finish the jewellery, a ruby ring and pendant, and he comes back some time later with one of the roses that he grows.

It is like a miniature one. That is what he specialises in. Then he asks me if I can make one like that for him out of 18ct gold.... didn't matter what it cost, just do it.

Now me, I was just brand new in the trade, two years or so, and I was just teaching myself casting. When you learn casting, every problem can be solved by casting.

And boy, did I try. I tried cast about thirty roses, then leaves, and various other plant types.

I dipped them in wax, sprayed them with clear lacquer, burnt the out for five days non stop, all to no avail

The only success I had was with a Geranium leaf. Never got the order finished, sad to say.

I was just in to much of an experimental vacuum to really know what I was doing.

And it never OCCURRED to me to make it by hand. I was just not experienced enough.

But now I am.......

I am going to make a bunch of them in a vase out of silver. Sort of life size.

And I am also going to make a tiny spray of them out of 18kt gold for a brooch. Watch this space.

This is Anne's version of a dish that Hanuman, the owner of Ganoksin and the Thaifoodmaster Silver Pomfret in Three Flavors Tamarind Sauce recipe he put on You Tube.

Okay so we didn't have the right shrimps or fish.

But we made do with what is on the island, and I might say it was friggin' nice.

I love Thai food.

New Pendant and New Kindle.

This is a new replacement pendant I have finished.

Blued titanium and 18kt yellow and white gold shape of St Maarten.

The gold line denotes the two sides of the island. The top is France which is also known as the side with the permanent lunch time, and the bottom is the Netherlands side, known as the side with the perpetual power outages. Ahem.. I only joke a little bit....

My new Kindle. For the last three weeks I have had ants in my pants. I kid you not.

Getting this thing to St Maarten took some doing, 'cause Amazon does not ship the Kindle to foreign countries.

So I got my good friend Paula to set up an account at Amazon with her credit card in our name.

And while I am on the subject of good friends, a shout-out to Amy, who also offered to set one up for me as well. Not forgotten at all.

Anyway, once I had that set up I bought with my own Amazon account a gift card and redeemed it into Paula's and mine acc. Buying a gift card can be done with a foreign card.

She then bought the Kindle for me, and when she received it, loaded it with some books and Fed Ex'd it to me.

Naturally Fe Ex arrived on Friday, so I had to wait the WHOLE weekend and until four'o clock Monday until the dude walked in with my parcel.

What a NICE thing.

Previously, and for the last 1o years, I had to order ten or twenty books from Amazon, then have the shipped to Miami, then with a shipping company to St Maarten, or Botswana, before I came here.

This was a major mission and it took anything from six to twelve weeks to get here.

Now?

Well this afternoon, I connected my Kindle to my computer and downloaded a book in minutes,

bang, just like that.

It was one that I am halfway through in hardcover, but no ways am I going to finish it other than on my Kindle

And it can hold 500 books.

And it's got a dictionary built in.

Those are the three things I want the most.

It has got all kinds of other stuff, but that don't interest me much. I do all the other stuff on my computer anyway.

I read a boatload of books a year, mostly hardcore science fiction.

But I like reading very good previously read books again.

And being a loskop artist I always loose, misplace or just forget where they are.

And now I can get the latest ones from Amazon, like NOW, as they come out.

I know this is going to be like when digital photography came out. The day I got my first digi camera, I never took another film picture again. Not once.

Like that, I know I will never buy another paperback again.

Fancy books, yes, but paperbacks, never.

What a jol.....

Gold and Titanium Ring, a Pendant and a Story.

Here are three pictures of a 18kt yellow gold and titanium ring I made, set with melee diamonds.

I first drill and file the center titanium part out of a 4mm piece of plate.

Then I file it into shape, drill the holes for the diamonds and pavé set them.

Setting stones pavé into titanium is actually very easy.

It is quite a forgiving metal, so the beads can be manipulated quite a lot before they snap. For instance, setting stones into nickle white gold is much more difficult.

After I have set the diamonds, I blue the center ring.

I have one chance to get this right.

That is, if I over heat it or screw up the colour evenness I remake the ring, because there is no ways I can sand everything down, what with the pavé setting.

I use my lowest flame setting I can get on my torch-- like a little itsy teeny flame.

This is because the thinner portions of the ring will overheat quickly and go past the colour band that I want.

This has happened many times in the past with other pieces, and causes the most unseemly language to be heard in my workshop.

Hot rings are also known to gain a high velocity instantly- and come to an abrupt stop against an immovable object, like the wall.

Luckily, this did not happen with this ring and it was finished with a measure of serenity.........

This is a commissioned 18kt gold pendant set with a .65ct diamond.

A very nice stone, pure and white, it was the remaining one of a set of earrings.

Lost on a beach, I believe.

It is very foolish to wear jewellery on a beach.

Or to swim with it in the sea.

I once had a customer in South Africa, Mrs L. who owned a flawless 5 carat colour D round diamond set in a solitare ring.

She brought in a few of her pieces for cleaning before she went on holiday, and after that was done, I inspected the jewellery.

The prongs on the diamond ring were very worn, and I told here that under no circumstances should she wear the ring until she came back and I could replace the collet.

Needless to say, she wore the ring on the beach, and lo and behold, when she looked down at her finger, the diamond was gone from the ring.

A lot of anguish ensued, but the beach was big, the diamond small and nothing was found.

As darkness fell, the family walked back to their bungalow, and as her son walked into the kitchen he noticed some beach tar stuck under his flip flop sandle.

And in it, there was the diamond.

Seriously lucky.

Most stories, however, don't end that way......