My new custom bails for pointy cabs (sort of a tutorial)

[connrock]

I found a fairly easy way to cut or file perfectly square ends every time.
I use it mainly for bezel wires but have also used it for tubes and some of the bigger wires ,,,like the double round wires that had to have the ends soldered together.
It's made of a small machinists clamp and a piece of 3/16" square stock that is silver soldered to the clamp,,,,
I put a small strip of copper in it just for photos,,,I also left the copper strip sticking out much more then needed for the photo op! LOL






It may be to the extreme but I got tired of trying to file ends square,,,,especially bezel wires!
I think most newbies get turned off to bezel settings because they don't get the ends of the bezel wires square to each other which causes poor soldered joints that look terrible.
They also don't take enough time to "set" the ends perfect before soldering.
connrock

[Bluesky78987]

Cool contraption Connrock!

[Tom]

That is a good contraption Conrock. Now to find a clamp somewhere. Before I started instructing Electrical I used to actually work for a living. The place I worked had lots of reject materials of every type or description, to be had for the asking. I would have been able to make so many cool things if I still worked there!

[pghram]

That's a very nice design. Have you ever tried to add prongs instead or in addition to using glue? I have never had much success in gluing stone to metal, I'm sure I'm doing something wrong. I really like the clean lines of your design.

Rich

[Tom]

Rich, prongs are a good idea, I have never tried them but some square silver wire soldered to the silver plate back Susan mad would be pretty easy to do. I may have to try that out. I use glue on bails as does Susan (we are in the same 12 step group LOL). I have used both "Hot Stuff" super glue and Epoxy 330 with long lasting success. I really really like your idea of prongs soldered to a silver plate, I might have to steal that idea:)

[connrock]

One of the many different ways to make a setting without a bezel,,,
The front of the setting can have something like the heart I have here or by just using prongs like I did on the back,,,,
Front,,,


Back,,,

This is not a very strong setting and I wouldn't suggest using something like it for bigger/heavier stones but it does work for something like this small pies of sea glass.


If you have trouble soldering prongs to a setting you may like to try this,,,,
Instead of trying to hold each prong at it's finished length,,,,cut the prong wires much longer then actually needed for the setting.
Hold the outer "frame" of the setting with a 3rd hand,,, or lay it on something like 2 pieces of 1/8" square stock as parallel as you can over a soldering board.
If you use the square stock make sure you don't have it where the prongs will go.
I use a hard Solderite board like this one,,,,


Using a very small nail or carpet tack,small drill,etc,make holes deep enough(and small enough) in the board to hold your prong wires as straight as possible.Push a prong wire(I make the prong wires about 3/4"-1" long)into the holes in the board and make sure they are tight against the frame of the setting.
Solder the prong wires to the frame and cut them to suit,file,sand,etc.

I'm SURE there are easier and better ways of doing this but it's what I came up with to make it a little easier for me to make prong settings.
connrock

[connrock]

Rich,,,
Rocks,metal, and glue,epoxy don't like to stick to each other if the rocks and metal are polished or even fairly smooth.
Keep the part of the rock that's going to be adhered to the metal rough and rough up the metal as well.
You can even use a metal scribe to scratch "lines" in the metal and then sand off the "burs" with a fairly rough emery.
Also,clean the rock and metal with acetone and try not to touch those surfaces with you hands and fingers.
If using epoxy 330 make SURE the resin and hardener are mixed VERY good.There's no rush using epoxy 330 so don't hurry.
Keeping "pressure" on the pieces that have been epoxied,,clamps,weights,etc,,,helps a LOT.What type of clamps,weights you use depends on the situation but if you don't put "pressure" on the pieces they wont stick together very well.
Something I just learned by reading it "somewhere" is if you are using epoxy and don't want it to stick to whatever you lay the pieces on,,,fold a few pieces of wax paper to lay the pieces on.
The cured epoxy doesn't stick to the wax paper.
connrock

[pghram]

Thanks connrock, based on your input, the stones were probably too smooth & so the glue didn't hold for the long-haul. Thanks again.

Rich

[Pat]

I really like that little miter box idea, and I'm going to try con rocks clamp idea for evening bezel edges. We could save a lot of time if we could get the ends meeting 100% in reasonable time.

Like the prong idea, too

Susan, thanks for bring this up.