Student of the Week-Daun Hauspurg

by jeanettecaines on October 4, 2010

 Congratulations to our latest Student of the Week-Daun Hauspurg.  She just finished this gorgeous bracelet a week or so ago. We do mostly bezels for our stones at JAI and this piece is no exception.   I like to think of a bezel as a beautiful frame with the artwork being the stone.  Almost every project begins with making your bezels and good technique is essential to getting your piece off to the right start.   The most important advice I could give any student who is making bezels is that if it doesn’t fit well or is badly fused MAKE ANOTHER ONE.  You would not believe how hard it is to get people to start over.  So many would rather slave over “fixing”something for an hour that will never look right rather than trash it and in 10 minutes have a much better one.  Sometimes I almost have to wrestle it out of their hands.  I tell all my students that no angels sang when I made my first bezels, I just did it a zillion times until I got good at it.  It’s the attachment to any one particular bezel or piece that hangs people up.  Here’s a few tips for good bezels.

 Always start by cutting the end of your bezel strip straight.  When cutting always line yourself up so that your scissors are 90 degrees from what they are cutting.  Many people don’t line themselves up straight to start with and can never figure out why they can’t cut straight.  We fuse our bezels at JAI so it’s very important that our seam is butted together tightly with no light showing through.  I always hold mine up to the light source at my bench to see what is really going on.  Checking how well your bezel is together after fusing is very important. If it is only partially fused it may crack open later, for example, during setting.  I have seen this happen and it’s a huge drag.  Here is how you never let that happen again. Take your just fused bezel and start to squeeze it. If where the seam is starts to form a sharp point like the top of an capital “A” then you need to re-fuse.  If it just forms an irregular curve then your bezel is done.  You can roll it on a mandrell and continue.  Here is to Daun and her beautiful piece. Well Done!

jeanettecaines

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{ 3 comments… read them below or add one }

Kenya October 29, 2010 at 7:31 pm

This bracelet is absolutely beautiful!

Kim Nogueira October 7, 2010 at 5:56 am

Wow, that’s gorgeous!

Holly October 5, 2010 at 12:08 pm

So beautiful. The diamonds look like droplets of water on the bracelet. Great job!

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