Work in Progress - New Cuff

Today I started working on making a cuff I sketched out a couple of days ago. I enjoy cuffs as it was of the first type of jewelry I ever made when I started this journey. The design is relatively simple, but this simplicity provides a understated elegance. Four wires form the basis of the cuff, soldered together with a turquoise placed in a bezel on top.

I started by wiring up my cut pieces of 6 gage wire to hold them together as I soldered the seams between the individual wires. Below is the first photograph I took of this process, showing a preview of what I intend the final piece to look like, roughly, laid out next to my original sketch.

I file down the two ends of the wires, giving them a nice curved edge. This part ended up taking a fair amount of time to smooth everything up and use a collection of small files to clean up the wire ends to make sure everything is nice and smooth. To finish the band up, I then buffed it up to clean it up.

Next, it's time to make the bezel that'll contain the stone. I cut a thin piece of copper and wrap it around the turquoise to size it up. I solder the the wire closed like a ring, and then solder that onto a flat plate of copper that I cut to the approximate size of the stone and solder the edge to make a nice bezel.

Next, I cut off that spare material from the copper plate and then file down the edge so that the bezel is a nice clean and smooth cup for the stone. 

Next time, I'm going to solder the bezel onto the band, clean everything up, and then finally set the stone!