Hello I just wanted to share some of the pieces I have done in the last year. I took up the hobby out of an interest in sculpture and a background in the industrial arts. Most of my work so far has been cast using Delf Clay I tend to start with rough forms and then grind and shape the metal with hand tools or a small rotary tool. I think of the pieces as more of one off art pieces rather than products to be reproduced so they may seem a bit unique but I hope you’ll forgive me for my eccentric design philosophy. I will post one piece at a time over the next few weeks.
First a ring featuring 10 carat natural emerald in a brutalist silver setting. I had in mind the sort of rings a sorcerer in a grim fantasy story would wear. I titled the piece Shattered Memory.
I really like how this came out, and since it was a damaged gemstone I got the materials for fairly cheap. The heaviness of the setting gave me a lot of trouble, it felt hard to balance it with the band and I had to recast it with a thicker band before I was satisfied.
If anyone is interested, the ring is size 3 but could be sized up to a 6 or 7 and is for sale on my Mercari page now.
https://www.mercari.com/us/item/m15777512743/?iv_code=XQEJYQ&object_id=m15777512743&object_type=item
This is very good quality emerald material. It is as shame the stone was broken, but you made it shine again! Emerald in soft for a gemstone (mho Hardness is 6), so stone damage is common. I like your solution!
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Thanks, it was one of those things where I bought the stone impulsively and spent a long time with no idea how to use it, just knew it needed to center the brokenness of it. The seller had a few beautiful unbroken stones but they were well out of my price range.
Emeralds are soft, and hard to work with.
Look at Sapphires, they come in most colors, and are tough and hard! They can be cast into a setting by placing them in the delft clay, then pouring the metal around the stone.
Red sapphires should be avoided, because as Rubies, some have been filled with leaded glass on cracks. So avoid red, and the others aren't worth enough to repair in this fashion.
Chrome Diopside look like emeralds with the same color due to chromium in the matrix. They also share the soft problem emeralds have, but they are cheaper and easier to find.
Keep on casting!
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Oh wow, I had no Idea you could cast around sapphire, that opens up a huge amount of opportunities a lot of organic forms and shapes I wouldn't even try to set stones into if I have to do it by hand. Thanks for the tip about rubies sad that it's the signature red ruby you have to watch out for, since that's what I would probably first look to rubies for.
Guess I will add it to the list of things to look out for when I buy. Honestly I have noticed that there are a lot of odd somewhat underhanded tactics in the gem marketplace. Repairs on gems not being noted and false or misleading labeling on certain types of stones. People calling Moissanite "Lab grown diamonds" or selling irradiated topaz as natural blue topaz. mostly online, wish I could get to the gem and rock expo and deal with some people face to face since that basically eliminates all of the risk on those sorts of things. Sadly though the insane over reaction to covid has shut it down repeatedly so I'm stuck on ebay buying blind since my state has gone full on Soviet totalitarian on us. Completely halted my gem buying habit to be honest, which long run may be good because I have a fair stash of stuff that I am now starting to re-approach with projects in mind.
There are a lot of liars on eBay! That's why I put in my own optics lab, so I could verify the stones were accurate.
If you don't buy from china, you have a better chance of getting good gemstones. More likely, the lions share of listings from china, are lies....
The most reliable Gemstone sources on eBay, are from Thailand.
Mho Hardness test sets are not expensive, and a good scale should be under $30. The scale will let you calculate the specific gravity of the stone. with hardness and specific gravity, you can identify a lot of stones.
Casting in place is a good option, and your clay is fine enough to do it!
Keep on casting...and posting of course.
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Yeah a high precision scale and a good quality jewelers loop was my first purchase after I started buying online. Will look into the hardness testing kit, been using my diamond tester since I can get a general idea of hardness but since it’s mostly a threshold test of hardness and hard to calibrate for softer stones it’s definitely a little hit or miss.
If you make a wire hangman with as small horizontal loop to put the gemstone into, you can use a small cup of water to immerse the stone in the loop. The difference in weight will allow you to calculate the specific gravity.
Make a mark on the rope part, and immerse the fixture in the water, to set your tare value. This removes the weight change of the support wire, to give you a better calculated number.
The mho tester set will help. A refractometer reading of refractive index, is the other number that really narrows it down.
A loupe is a good tool that will give you a lot of information about the stone. Lab created stones are perfect, so they show up with a loupe. I want to see some inclusions, before I buy! Even a bubble can prove it's natural....
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