Building Displays and New Emerald Ring

I finished the display to the point where I have to put glass into it.
To get the glass, it involves me driving to the french side of the island.
Giving them the sizes and paying for it.
Then in four or so days I must drive again to fetch it.
This takes three hours a morning each trip there and back.
Friggin’ mission.

I take copper foil, and anneal it in my oven.
I oxidize it quite well, at 600C until it is thoroughly black and then I quench it in normal water.
Then crush it up like one would do to a ball of aluminium foil. It is a bit harder and I don’t crush it too tight.
Then I heat it again to 600C and again anneal it normal water,
Then I unfold it.
The colour goes like the front most times and it gives a completely crishy look.

I don’t clad the back part because it is going to be mounted against a wall with four expanding bolts.
A mounting bracket can be seen above the light hole.

I make a lead soldered brass frame out of brazing rods and clad the frame with the annealed copper foil.
Just a normal soldering iron is good for tacking their foil over the brass rod.
I use a low powered soldering iron, because it does not change the foreground colour.


I finished this ring yesterday. It’s 14kt gold , but the strips where the spessartite garnets are set in are 18kt and the tube that holds the emerald is made out of 22kt gold.
My client is a regular visitor to the island and gave me, amongst other sentimental jewellery, the center stone, being a 3.57 carat emerald that has it’s fair share of inclusions.
It is not badly cut and the girdle is not too thin, so I figure that if it survived being set into 14kt gold in it’s previous ring, it will survive my setting it in a 22kt tube.
I have cut and set hundreds of emeralds and the more I set, the more cautious I become….
I trust large emeralds nothing.
I assume that any emerald is treated in some manner, from the rough dealer to the cutter to the end user.
So what I do is to minimise the risk .
I don’t heat it up.
I don’t put it in the ultrasonic.
I clean it by hand.
I treat it like a baby…….

One can quickly remove all the colour from an emerald in the ultrasonic if you are unlucky.

If that happens, it is very difficult to explain to your client.

But this one in the picture looks ok and it’s quite a nice stone. A little more yellow than the photo’s colour, on my monitor.