In February I took a week off from my normal work and traveled to Tenessee to attend the Stone Setting Comprehensive workshop at New Approach School. I had heard great things about this school, the teacher Blaine Lewis and especially this class. I really needed a referesher for stone setting. I do it daily but always suspect there are things I could do easier, quicker and just better. I am fairly good, I would think, at bezel setting but always stuggle with prong settings, have good and bad days when trying flush setting, rarely do channel settings and never even tried Pave or bead setting.
Even better about this whole gig was that I finally met some online friends from our Etsymetal team. I spend the week with Shirlee Grund and Sarah Hood. We had a blast. It was great knowing a few people in class already. But we also met a few other students, some locals and some who traveled to this class from various locations in the US.
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| All the practice rings finished during Comprehensive Stone Setting Class at New Approach School |
The class is intense but somehow even beginners managed to keep up (more or less). I was glad I took this class and did not jump to the advanced setting class. Even if some stuff was what I do day in and out, I still learned a lot of new tricks to make it all better in the future. Some settings I did similar (maybe because I learned it from his bezel and flush setting video some years ago). Other setting tricks were really an eye opener (prong tightening via vector approach!!!! Duh, why did I not think about that one). I learned that I need to open my funnel holes way more than I did before and seats don't need to be that wide. Lot's of proper tool use, tips like which bur to used first, how to hold the flexshaft and get control over the bur, the proper height to cut the seat... It's all just packed with little eye openers and "secrete" tips.
Blaine's way of demonstrating the techniques is great and really understandable. Loved seeing everything he did in so much detail on the large screens via his super magnification. I took lot's of notes and refereed back to them ever since coming home and jumping right back into setting stones in my orders. Since returning and in the months afterwards I definitely saw an improvement in my settings and the time it took to get them finish.
Some photos I took during the week of the setting rings and the tools we used can be found on Flickr.
It was a intense week of learning. The class started at 8:30am and went till 6pm or 7pm most nights. Blaine stayed long some night since we just could not get enough of his wisdom and wanted to finish our tasks before going home.
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| practicing bead setting for the first time |
Blaine's way of demonstrating the techniques is great and really understandable. Loved seeing everything he did in so much detail on the large screens via his super magnification. I took lot's of notes and refereed back to them ever since coming home and jumping right back into setting stones in my orders. Since returning and in the months afterwards I definitely saw an improvement in my settings and the time it took to get them finish.
Some photos I took during the week of the setting rings and the tools we used can be found on Flickr.
It was a intense week of learning. The class started at 8:30am and went till 6pm or 7pm most nights. Blaine stayed long some night since we just could not get enough of his wisdom and wanted to finish our tasks before going home.
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| Channel setting practice run with brass blank and CZs. With some amazing tips it's actually not that much of a mystery anymore. |
The practice pieces during the class were all done with his pre-made brass mountings setting cheap CZ's. It's a great way of learning without having to fear to damage expensive mountings or stones.
- Day 1 was flush setting and round stone prongs
- Day 2 was bead setting and drove us all crazy. I think that was the hardest for us all. Kind of strange he did that so early on in the week but I guess the purpose was to teach us working with gravers. That really made a huge difference after that day. I think we also did a channel setting in the afternoon.
- Day 3 we started grinding gravers and how to sharpen them, then jumped into an oval thick wall bezel setting. He showed us how to do milligrain on settings. And more custom tool making.
- Day 4 we did princess cut prong setting and then a semi-bezel setting with round stone
- Day 5 last day was really intense: short prong basket setting, Gypsy setting with a round Cabochon and then another type of channel setting with tilt in stones
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| End of Day 2. |
I really loved that we made custom tools and learned graver sharpening.
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| Gravers and custom stone setting tools |
The class is well worth the money. It certainly adds up quite a bit with tuition, lodging, car to travel around, food, flight from LA,... But I am really glad I finally did it. It will pay for itself in no time. I think I might be interested to go back to the advanced class in a year or two.
All these long demonstrations were great, packed with lot's of stories from his many years in the business. I really liked that he did a few little "screw ups" too during his demonstrations like braking some CZ's when channel setting. Not sure if those were intentional. But he turned it around as a teaching point in how to fix these things. And that breaking stones happens to the best. Kind of made me feel a bit better
During our visit in Franklin, Tennessee we ate great southern food, heard some nice county music performances, did some sightseeing and met with Carrie Nunes who showed us around in Nashville. Beautiful city. I bet it's really nice there during non-winter times. It was a great winter getaway for me, a nice break from the oh so tough LA weather. In a way I loved the cold and rain for a couple days after spending my time in 80 degree Fahrenheit the week before in LA. I came back with lot's of new knowledge to try and practice immediately since I got lot's of orders to finish.
