Spessartite Lamination Pendant

I bought a nice couple of rough spassartite (garnet) gemstones from Nigeria.

I cut the largest into two with a diamond saw.
Then I rolled out some 18 kt yellow gold about 2 mm thick.

I polished the two ends and the gold and resin bonded them together.
I use HXTAL resin to bond them together.

Once they were bonded together, I filed the gold further down.

I filed it level with the preform and then continued shaping the pre-form until it was ready for dopping.

I use an Imahashi gem cutting machine.

The cut and polished gemstone.

I thought that the gold would interfere with my polishing lap.
I use a Batt lap, which is primarily a combination of tin and zinc, so I though that gold swarf would embed itself into the Batt lap and then scratch the surface of the stone.
This did not happen at all, and it polished as if it were a normal stone.

I set some 1.5 mm diamonds pavé into the gold strip.

This is a schematic of how the bail and dangle drop diamond was attached to the gemstone.

Expanding on the method of attaching the bail and danling diamond.

Imagine this is the gold in the pendant which has had a hole drilled from top to bottom.

I solder the top jump ring closed. 

Put wire through the center hole.

Cut and bend the bottom part

Drill a hole through the central wire.

Also, if the central wire is roughened up a bit with a small ball frazer or such, then glue also works well. The object of the pin is to stop the central wire from turning if the bottom is bent.

If there is no bottom part, then the pin holds the bail ring part in place.

In high end pieces I pavé set the little pin in a star shape.

Side view.
I just bend the bottom which is more than strong enough to hold any secondary piece if needed.
The reason I use a pin instead of glue is because the central wire can then be removed relatively easily.

If glue is used, the pin becomes virtually impossible to remove without any damage.