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Jul. 2nd, 2009 05:25 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
afmetalsmithI must say, I am not at all impressed with the tapered bezel technique in the most recent "Jewelry Artist" magazine. While I can see it leads to more scrap, I think the technique of starting with an arc to make the tapered bezel is vastly preferable to cutting a strip, trying to turn in more-or-less into a tube, then forming the tube in the bezel block. The tube formed this way is irregular; the seam doesn't meet well, and when one starts to form the bezel, the material compresses a lot at the bottom and is getting very thinned out at the top.
Cutting an arc makes it easier to get a good meet at the seam, and keeps the metal more or less a consistent thickness during the forming process. Also, I had little trouble doing the arc approach even with 1mm sheet when making a setting for a 3.4mm stone... and that was just NOT happening with the new technique.
Apart from messing with those, I concentrated on commission work today.
Cutting an arc makes it easier to get a good meet at the seam, and keeps the metal more or less a consistent thickness during the forming process. Also, I had little trouble doing the arc approach even with 1mm sheet when making a setting for a 3.4mm stone... and that was just NOT happening with the new technique.
Apart from messing with those, I concentrated on commission work today.
