No, not that kind of investment. I mean the super-fine casting powder that can be used when casting lost wax figures that are then melted out in a kiln and metal is poured into the void.

And no, I’m not doing that, either. For one thing, I don’t have a kiln. But investment can also be used in a soldering technique where you put delicate, fiddly pieces of a setting together on some plasticine, then form a barrier around them and pour on a layer of investment. Once the investment, which can take incredibly high temperatures, is bone dry you turn it over, peel off the plasticine, and the jewelry parts remain in the investment and are ready to be soldered together on the bottom.

This has two benefits:

1. I don’t have to hold my breath while putting together fiddly bits or worry about bumping something out of alignment.
2. Soldering everything on the bottom keeps the top looking clean and pristine and means a lot less cleanup for me.

I’m going to make up some bracelet links this weekend with this method and see how well it works. I think it’s going to make my job as a silversmith a lot easier.

This is a pendant I made for a friend and colleague who saw a golden rutilated quartz pendant I’d made as a giveaway and wanted to know if I could make her something similar.

So I found a stone she liked that was very similar to the first pendant, ordered it, and when it arrived I realized it was faceted (the first pendant had a smooth cabochon). Since facets really deserve prong settings I decided to make my first double gallery (that refers to the “basket” that the stone sits in) prong setting with V-shaped prongs, which were also a first for me.

After watching a LOT of instructional videos on YouTube I got to work. The galleries are made from 16g square wire with 16g spacers, then I created the V prongs for the ends. Why did it need V prongs, you ask? Because any stone with a pointy end on it like a marquise (the shape of this stone), pear, or square needs extra protection on the pointy corners to make sure they don’t get chipped. A V prong has a groove cut out for the girdle of the stone to fit into, plus an extra pocket burred out for the very tip of the corner that protects it from being banged around and chipped.

Said a prayer to Hephaestus and soldered on the V prongs and round prongs. To my delight nothing fell off or melted in the process so I trimmed everything, soldered on a jump ring and bail, polished off any extra solder, tumbled it in the burnisher, cut the grooves for the stone’s girdle and the pockets for the stone’s tips, then carefully seated the stone…

…and it popped right in without a problem. I tell you, I was shocked. I could have simply pushed in the prongs and rounded their tops but because this is a big ol’ stone I wanted the extra security of claws holding it in place along with the V prongs. The client has seen a picture and is happy with it, which is all that matters in the end.

But the really nice thing about this is that I can now make a setting for my teardrop moldavite (a forest green, olive green or blue greenish vitreous silica projectile glass that was formed by a meteorite impact in southern Germany and is considered a gemstone) and wear it as a pendant.

And no, I’m not going to show it to you. There’s the tiniest black spot under the nail plate next to the cuticle that is obviously an eensy clot and the tip of the finger is a bit tender, but that’s about it. All in all, it could have been a lot worse.

And may I just say that trying to type with a band-aid over a fingertip is a royal PITA. I kept making I don’t know how many mistakes while I was working today, to the point where I finally yanked off the band-aid and went with a smaller one that just wrapped around the finger instead of going over the tip.

In other news I’m starting a commissioned piece that is going to be a number of firsts for me and has the potential to go dreadfully wrong. I’m building my first double gallery collet out of 16g square sterling wire, creating my first V prongs, and then I have to solder everything together without melting anything or causing any parts to drop off (because why make things difficult for myself when I can make them really, REALLY difficult).

That being said, I am going to order myself some investment (the super-fine Plaster of Paris-like mixture that can take very high temps and is used when casting fine jewelry) so that I can use a technique where I position setting parts on some plasticine, set up a barrier around them, pour investment over them, and when the investment is bone dry pull off the plasticine and solder the underside of the parts together. It’s a lot easier than shoving prongs into a soft charcoal block and praying that they stay in place while I solder them to a collet.

Or I can just buy some Hold It soldering clay. I dunno. But I do know there are easier ways to put together small, complex setting parts than the way I’ve been doing it.