Pendant findings

[RoughCreations]

That should work. By watching various stone-setting videos it's easy to get the impression that you need an array of expensive tools to do the job. You can make a lot of great tools yourself quickly and quite easily my modifying tools made for different purposes, usually a bit of grinding, filing and a polish is all that's required. Burnishers and pushers can be made very quickly and easily, and even hand gravers. I might put up some articles I have collected over the years to this end. You really only need a small set of simple hand tools to tackle most jobs, it's all technique.

Arguably the best investment to be made for an 'intermediate' level setter is a rotary flex tool of some sort, coupled with rotary ball burrs of different sizes, there are quite a few options nowadays that don't have the hefty price-tag of 'real' jewellery tools, but have essentially the same function - seems like you are already equipped for this.

RC

[Faceting Frank]

Finished my first pendant, a 12.4mm round yellow CZ 16 sided concave. Got a bit of practice in with getting a stone fitting into the claws, ready to bend the claws over first.
The girdle was concaved as well, which meant there was to chance of it matching up with the 6 claws, so filed the inside of the claws just above the girdle line. So, when bent over they did not press against the side of the girdle. It worked ok, the stone is nice and firm and I managed not to damage the stone. Got a few more pendants ordered, as well as some diamond files.
The setup for doing this is an old faceting head, the pendant glued to a 6mm bolt and put in the quill. Worked really well, being able to turn the pendant to file the inside of the claws.

[swirly]

very nice

[RoughCreations]

Finished my first pendant, a 12.4mm round yellow CZ 16 sided concave. Got a bit of practice in with getting a stone fitting into the claws, ready to bend the claws over first.

Looks slick - Is there anything you can't do? lol.

[Faceting Frank]

Is there anything you can’t do? I would say everything till someone shows me how. The two YouTube vids I watched on fitting faceted stones were from the US.
Both were rings, couldn’t find any pendant vids. They had all the best gear, rotating lockable vices, mini reversable hand drills with micro burrs.
I think the only thing I thought of myself was gluing the pendant to a bolt with Araldite, which easily comes off with a bit of heat.

[MakkyBrown]

Good job Frank, Santa is going to be popular this year.

[Azard_faza]

Great!

[Bucket]

Makky, Santa is always popular!

[steve f]

Bloody good job Frank

[Faceting Frank]

Came up with an improvement on gluing the pendant to a ¼” bolt. Gluing it to a 6mm washer soldered to a dop. This works well with the gem setting pliers I bought from Aussie Sapphire.
 If you look at the pliers on their website, you will see you can close the jaws with a threaded hand screw. If you put one jaw under the washer you can push the pendant claw down with some sort of control with the hand screw without pressing on the girdle. I finish the claws off with a bit of round plastic with a groove filed in it. So far have done 5 pendants, without any stuff ups. The three in the photo are, yellow CZ, natural amethyst and natural eradiated blue topaz.
I used to get clean preformed rough blue topaz from the US, good value for money when you consider it was preformed to round, oval, square shapes etc. But unfortunately, their website disappeared a couple of years back.

[Azard_faza]

Great Work!

[Faceting Frank]

Five more stones fitted into pendants, with another 11 pendants on their way from Jamming Gems. The pendants in the photo are three corundum, one concave cut CZ and a blue topaz, the topaz is 12mm dia. As I said before I have cut a few blue topaz stones from a supplier in the US that sold clean preformed blue topaz rough. Have a few more blue topaz stones I would like to fit into pendants and two preforms still to cut someday.

[Big Al]

We have people in our club who deal with LA Gems in Qld. You can google them

[Faceting Frank]

Thanks for the info Big Al and welcome to the forum. Never knew LA Gems existed, looked at their website and they certainly have plenty to choose from.

[Faceting Frank]

This is the first stone I’ve fitted that the pavilion point protrudes beyond the bottom of the pendant. Researched gluing silver and the recommended glue is e6000. Never heard of it, but they think it’s great stuff so that’s good enough for me. The 1mm dia. silver round wire is from Silversmithingtools, all one word. They recommend soft wire for forming, can get it harder. Wanted an I D of 9mm so, bent it round an 8mm drill bit which worked out well.
Will glue that on the bottom of the pendant and that will be as close to silver smithing as I’m going to get.