Ok, not to sound overly arrogant, but I am sooo happy with how my things turned out. I cranked out two pairs of earrings and two rings in two days. So, while making my first pair of earrings that you see below, I encountered a lot of trouble. The bezels that go around the stones do not have backs. This means that you have to close one side of the bezel and then set the stone in it and then close the other side. Well...to say the least I had a hard time doing this. The bezel has to be an exact fit around the stone, otherwise it wiggles around inside the bezel. My bezels were not a perfect fit. So, I had to hammer, file, and tap for hours to get my bezels to fit. If you can see the roughness of the bezels on the stones you are looking at the small remainder of what I could not hide. It is alright though because it goes with the earrings. Anyway, after hours of tedious, and very very frustrating work I had one bezel finished and I was soldering the jump ring onto the second when it melted!!! I mean the thing just collapsed into a small vibrating glob of red hot silver. The bezels were so thin that the torch heated them up very quickly. So, I had to start my perfect bezel over. Eventually it got done and I finished the earrings. It was cool though because I have never made hoops before. So I totally improvised my hoops and they turned out great!

The next piece is the pair of pearl earrings. I like these because they aren't conventional in the fact that the bezels aren't closed. This way the white of the pearl reflects on the silver and casts a certain glow in the right lighting. In this picture you see the shadow that the open bezel creates. There is no risk of the stones falling out because they are set snug in their bezels. These were pretty simple to make, thankfully. I did melt anything or make my bezel too small so it was a smooth ride with these. It was fun though because I have never made studs before!

I am proud of all three of my pieces, but this ring I am most proud of. I had to made the bands for each ring, then made bezels for the stones. This process was different because they are faceted into a taper at the end.

With gems like these you have to set the stone on a filed edge so the point of the gem does not rest on the bottom of the bezel.

This means that you have to use an electric powered bur to file out a seat for the gem on an already thin bezel. Luckily I didn't encounter any problems with this part besides a lack of patience. I then set the bezels on the rings and soldered them. I then set the stones in their bezels and pushed the edges over. This takes longer than you think because, despite the smallness and thinness of the bezels, the silver is very hard to manipulate when the bezel is so small. So I eventually got that done and I did the usual buffer job. They look a little rough in this picture, I don't know why because they are actually very smooth. All in all though I am very very proud of this piece!

Lastly, these earrings I had made previously out of PMC. They were originally flat and had a very cloudy finish. So, I dapped them (meaning I rounded the flatness out) and I polished them. By simply doing these two things there is a world of a difference.

Although I am proud of my other rings, this is my favorite that I have made so far. It is simple and it has a very good weight to it. I discovered that I can melt down the PMC that I have and use it just like normal silver. So, I melted down some old rings that I had made years ago, that I didn't really like anyway, and I poured them into an ingot. I then milled down the blob of silver, aniling it every four times it went through the mill. I had to put the piece through the mill about thirty times, so you do the math. When you anil it ensures that the silver won't crack when you mill it down.

Silver gets very hard and stubborn when you work with it too much. So, when this happens and you do not anil the silver it will crack and then you have to start over. So, when you anil you have to heat the piece until it is glowing red and then keep it red for about a minute, without melting the silver. Anyway, after milling it down to the correct size and thickness I cut it and soldered it together. I then tapped it using a small, rounded, metal hammer to get the pock marks.