I made this surprising, minimalist pendant as a Christmas present for Flic.
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I started with a length of 2x2mm square sterling silver wire and formed this arc shape with a pair of round-nosed pliers. The fairly tight radius of the round-nosed pliers tended to mar the surface of the silver, so I should have used ring pliers or, better yet, made a hardwood press jig to joggle the arc profile in the vice. After a lot of adjustment I ended up with a symmetrical form, and removed the few dents with a little filing. |
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Next, I used a narrow disk burr to cut the slot for the setting. The slot is approximately 1.6mm wide, and 10mm long, to accept the 10x4mm marquise cut citrine. |
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Here's the slot, after cutting with the burr. |
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At this stage, the ends of the slot were radiused to the profile of the disk burr (dark blue line). They obviously wouldn't hold the pointed stone like this. The ends must be cut to meet the light blue line. |
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I used a 0.8mm flat graver to make these cuts. |
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Next, I cut the pendant to length with a medium piercing blade and neatened up the ends with a file.
I selected a 0.9mm square snake chain to echo the cross section of the pendant. I drilled a 1.3mm hole through the top to accept it. I then elongated the hole along the vertical axis with a ball burr. This allowed the chain to flow through more freely. Unfortunately, I forgot to take a photo.
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I polished the pendant with wet and dry paper, followed by rouge on a felt wheel.
Setting the stone was as simple as flexing the pendant between my fingers and slipping the stone into place. The stone does rattle a little. I toyed with the idea of adding a dab of shellac to fix it in place, but decided to stay true to the concept of the crazy setting and let mechanics do all the work. Ah! I could probably have laid a tiny leaf spring in the slot to push the stone up against the front face. A missed opportunity there.
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I desoldered the clasp loop to thread the chain through the pendant. Here it is fluxed and set up to be soldered back into place. |
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Finally, I pickled the loop to remove flux and oxide. |
Here's the finished item after a final polish and dip in the ultrasonic bath:
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Pretty pleased with this piece; I like the design, the experimental setting proved a success, and the whole thing even came together relatively quickly!
