"Computer Aided" Diamond Setting; "Before, During & After" (with gem-setting situations).

    This CAD diamond setting is an absolutely clean & organized process of setting diamonds. These are refurbished ring tops, each ring weighed 55 grams. There was also an "After Market, Rolex-Bezel" involved this labour intensive project.

  These are the original patterns direct from the designer's computer desktop, the round disks are for a ROLEX Bezel. 

 Instead of setting the diamonds with Pave' graver setting, I chose to use CAD, mini-claws. We also decided to use this method, as it offered a much cleaner looking watch-bezel and ring-top.

   I'm not mentioning my prices for my Diamond Setting fees, or any CAD costs. This isn't what I'm writing this tutorial-essay about.

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 My client "in his infinite wisdom", decided to have me set these diamonds on the very thin metal. This was a poor "judgement call " from him, as I proved him wrong many times during this project. 

 I attempted to persevere the thin metal but in all honestly, my actions failed as the metal was only 1.15mm's in thickness.

Here are the 350 diamonds to pick & choose from, for this challenging project.

 My jeweller removed the "thin metal" from the top of the ring and soldered the CAD  plate in it's place. You can see just how nicely the few diamonds look, there were only 2 MINI-CLAWS PER STONE.

  Here is a tray containing 190, 0.88 m's stones. I was afraid in dropping them when I moved them from one bench to my next bench.

  Each ring had 245 stones, YES, 245 LITTLE DIAMONDS, each were smaller than 0.1 mm. 

 I wasn't happy with the beading on the first ring pattern. I asked (told) my client some radical changes that had to be made, a.s.a.p. if I had to continue with this project. It was my ultimatum, now, or forget it!

 You can see how thin the metal was by looking into the holes. There was no uniformity anywhere.

To prove my point, here is my digital caliper to prove just how small the diamonds were. Some were, would you believe 0.72mm's? And I wasn't using any microscope in the diamond setting.

 This process was getting to be rather annoying as I couldn't proceed any further. We had a long talk about what I was going to do to remedy this problem.

 If I had to set larger stones, the depth were going to be problems in the final setting process. This metal was too thin for any bead-setting.

 

 In this package of stones, were 360 diamonds. Do you want to count them all? The total diamond weight was 4.07 carats.

  On the watch bezel, I had no problem thankfully but I Bright-Cut both lines had to be shiny. Not to mention that they had to be well defined on both sides of the bezel frame.

 My watch-maker had to get the bezel-frame well fitted. This was before any diamonds went into the spaces for setting.

 I had my of-site jeweller removed the thin metal plate and solder a new layer of gold that came with 488 mini-claws for the 244 diamonds. There were 2 claws for each stone, hence the doubling of the claw numbers everywhere.

The center stone was the largest to work with, it was 0.08 points in size.

The watch bezel finally got finished, then my watch-repairman had to fit the bezel to the watch frame.

On the outside edge were 42 diamonds, YES, I had to Bright-Cut both lines before the stones were set.

 Here is another view of the "finished, watch frame".  I used warm (not hot) Methylated Alcohol  to remove the shellac. 

I painted lines on the claw-tips. I used these to give me a spot to work on, so many little mini-claws I had to set the stones into little areas. Or I would have lost my way in the 190 diamonds. 

My bench-pin had a small area, this prevented me no chance in loosing any of these stones. I had to keep these stones into little groups, as many areas were needing different sizes all the time.

 I evenly spaced the corners with larger stones. That is why I had larger corner-spot  occupy a larger diamond.

The outside 42 diamonds, were the smallest of the 244 stones that I prepared.

Each of the watch-bezel had 4 mini-claws, but when I was drilling the holes, the claws were removing much of the available metal to set each stone. Being careful was so paramount in this project.

I had to select the smallest diamonds around the center larger stone.

Pre-polishing the watch-frame was not done quickly. It had to be done with much care and knowing where to polish and have this frame cleaned for setting.

My preferred ring clamp is named "Inside, Ring-Clamp", the plastic inserts come in different sizes

  The hexagonal screw expands by way of rotating it with a wrench-key. Each time it's turned, the screw tightens the ring tighter. I didn't want any sort of movement during the setting process.

You can see the "wrench-key" in the case.

 I only allowed a few diamonds onto my bench-peg while being set. I'd rather drop a few stones, than many. 

 You can see some of my setting tools; the wax-dob, hand-piece, graver for moving each bead-claw. Of course a metal tray to catch any dropped stones...(there were many of them.

 I only had 1 or 2 round burs being used at one time. I wanted an organized and  uncluttered bench-pin and setting area.

   The range of small round burs were in one packet from 0.03 => 0.10 mm's.

 The largest diamond was a 8.0 point diamond and now compare that with the 0.88mm's for the smallest. Now you can see why I had to change the top of both rings in using "CAD" to help me in this gem setting project. 

 I used the Onglette graver to move each claw over the stones. I "rounded" the leading point of the graver to lightly dig into the metal to gain better momentum in the pushing & moving process. I used a Bead-Burnisher to give me better access to those mini-claws where necessary.

 FINALLY EVERYTHING GOT FINISHED..YIPPEE! I was happy and so was my client.