[Jewelry making - Article 00043] - Re: [Orchid] Soldering with diamonds in place

[John Donivan]

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>     I may have burned the diamond when heating it prior to stretching
>     as it now looks very different to how it did before 

    That's too bad, Helen. I'd suggest a good pickle, ultrasonic, steam,
    all that stuff to be sure that it's not just dirt, but you're the one
    who can see it. Diamonds being pure carbon, which of course burns
    quite easily in air, it does need a coating of boric acid. Flux is a
    mixture that behaves much like an alloy - the borax melts at a lower
    heat, and the boric acid melts considerably higher, that's why it's
    used as a protective coating. Anyway. My suggestion to Jesse Hyu was
    to preset a diamond bezel and then solder it into the ring. That lets
    you set the bezel all the way down to the edge - you don't need to
    have a bezel rim for setting. I used to make a ring that had a strip
    of diamonds going under the center stone, all surrounded by 18kt. -
    almost impossible to set in place, but easy to do by setting the
    strip first. Many times you'll have a delicate piece that can't
    handle the pressures of setting - without shellac maybe, or even
    maybe not. Presetting the stone again is the answer. Anything
    resembling a shadow box, too. That's not to mention retipping,
    strapping, and using solder to tighten stones in various ways. If you
    have a princess cut diamond in a channel that's the same size as the
    stone, the diamond can just slide out the side. You can just put
    little bits of gold under each corner to prevent that - neatly, of
    course. There is one place to be especially careful, though, and
    that's pointed stones. If you solder on trillions and the points are
    embedded in metal, you can pull the piece out of the pickle with
    broken stones not from the heat per se but from the contraction of
    the metal as it cools. Same with pears and marquises, and also
    diamonds touching each other, like channel set baguettes or princess
    cuts. Also they must be surgically clean - I used to burn baguettes
    occasionally and I wondered why until I realized I layed them out on
    masking tape, and didn't clean off the glue. And there can be no
    trace of shellac - if you get the sweet smell of shellac, stop
    immediately and clean more. One time I retipped a diamond of about 6
    carats, and the foreman was on my back to get it done, do I dunked it
    in the pickle pot at about 1000F - he didn't bother me any more after
    that. Theoretically, according to GIA, you can heat diamonds to red
    heat and quench them in liquid nitrogen, because of the thermal
    expansion properties. I wouldn't recommend it, though, just for piece
    of mind. Very occasionally we'll have some mishap with soldering
    diamonds, but not very often, and certainly not with large stones -
    it's the little ones that get you, because they take up heat so fast.
    We also melt the prongs on a setting and stuff occasionally - it
    happens. 

http://www.donivanandmaggiora.com
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