Tube Setting with Bezel Pusher Free Tutorial

For the purpose of demonstrating this technique, I start with a stock piece of silver tubing with a 6.3 diameter.

I first drill the center out to 3 mm.

The round stone I am setting is 5 mm in diameter.

To enlarge the center hole in the tubing, I am using a 5.5 mm ball frazer.

The reason the ball frazer is slightly bigger than the diameter of the stone, is because most stones are not perfectly round, so the extra size picks up that slack.

The top of the tube walls should be in between 0.7 mm to 0.5 mm thick.

I expand the center with the ball frazer until the stone lies in the tube with the table of the stone nearly level with the top of the tube.

If the table is too high there will not be enough metal to fold over and if the table is too low there will be too much metals and it will hide a lot of the stone.

The art of setting is to have the minimum amount of metal holding the stone safely.

I am using a clamp for demonstration purposes.

Normally, the tube is attached to a jewellery piece of some form or another.

I insert the stone and make sure that it lies perfectly level.

I use my setting pusher held at about 45° and push down on one side of the tube.

I push down just enough, so as not to move the stone off from level.

Then I turn the tube around and I push Nr. 2 down on the opposite side of Nr.1, with as much pressure as I pushed from the first side.

Now I push down on No. 3 and 4 and this should then clamp the stone in place.

If the stone is not clamped, I repeat the process.

Once the stone is clamped in place, I push down on the next four corners, forming the eight sided look as in the picture.

By pushing down on alternate sides, eventually the walls of the tube are forced down over the entire girdle of the stone.

The more is pushed, the smoother the fold over section gets.

The folded over metal is then smoothed off with a No 5 escapement file or equivalent.

To remove the file marks from the folded over metal, I use a pumice rubber wheel.

These are obtainable the the jewelry supply shops in a coarse and fine grit.
The advantage that these wheels have over the traditional silicone wheels is that they don't scratch the stone.

They remove the metal but leave stones that are harder than 4 on the Mohs scale untouched.

The final finishing off, the bright cut is done with a flat graver.

The inner edge is cut away in a smooth soft motion with a flat graver.

The bottom of the graver is super smooth so when it cuts, the surface look like is has already been rouged.

I use an Edenta polishing wheel for polishing the bottom of the graver.