Precious Stones

Precious stones are traditionally defined by their exceptional rarity, high value, and hardness.

In jewelry fabrication, because it can’t be near hot metal or the torch, any sandpaper or finishes, you add the precious stone at the very end.

Though the highlight of the piece, the point which dictates most of the price of the jewelry, it was not really involved in the process of creation, joined with the rest of the piece of jewelry , which have been through fire and grit together to be joined into one cohesive object.

The stone I found at the beach is precious to me. It, too can be framed by precious metals to allude to it’s own worth.

Seaglass held in silver wire

Stone cracked after dunking into water after my third soldering.

The fabrication took a lot of testing, I learned as I worked, and the first stone I attempted to encase, I did the soldering without any regard to how the stone would react to repeated exposure to extreme heat from the torch. I would dunk it into a bowl of cold water after the torch, because when you solder metals, you can do so without worry, but this caused the stone to split in half in my first attempt.

Tweezer-like objects hold the wire in place while I solder.

With more attempts , I developed some techniques on the method to making these precious stone objects.

They spin and are the perfect pendant.