Generally speaking, there are two main ways to approach making a piece of jewellery — and understanding both, even if you specialise in one, is what lets a designer make the right call for each piece.
Fabrication: building directly in metal
The first approach, fabrication, works directly in metal prepared beforehand into basic forms — sheet and wire — which are then struck, cut, folded, bent, deformed, hammered, sculpted and joined to create the final piece. It is best for one-off designs, and it carries a quiet structural advantage: working the metal work-hardens it as the piece is made, so a fabricated piece is less easy to deform or damage while being worn.
Lost-wax casting: the model and the mould
The second approach, lost-wax casting, begins by carving a wax model of the design. The model is encased in a clay-like investment that hardens around it; the wax is then melted out — 'lost' — leaving a hollow impression that is filled with molten metal, which hardens into the final form in place of the wax. Casting is ideal for adaptation into mass production, and can even produce faithful copies of a piece that was originally hand-fabricated — the two approaches feeding each other.
Sheet and wire: the vocabulary of fabrication
Hand-fabrication metal comes in two basic forms. Sheet — paper-like sheets of various thicknesses, from which shapes are cut and formed. Wire — elongated extrusions across a wide range of thicknesses: thicker ones approach rods, thinner ones are properly called wire, and cross-sections vary beyond round.
Each has its natural roles at the bench:
- Thicker wire (rods): ring and bangle shanks, hinge inserts.
- Thinner wire: the prongs on gemstone settings, the links of a handmade chain.
Fashion jewellery designers sometimes build complete pieces from wire alone — wire-worked bracelets, wrap pendants — but in metalsmithing, wire exists to complement sheet: to achieve the forms sheet alone cannot.
Gauge: the shared unit of thickness
Both sheet and wire come in standardised thicknesses measured in gauge — the same scale for both. Gauge runs numerically inverse: as the gauge number increases, the metal gets thinner and finer. The thickness of the metal in hand is read directly with a gauge meter, and the number determines what the metal can take: a fine-gauge sheet behaves very differently under a hammer than a heavy one.
Every subsequent bench skill — annealing, sawing, soldering, forming, setting — happens to metal that arrived as sheet or wire at some gauge. Choosing that starting point is the first design decision of fabrication.
Grounded in the JDMIS Metalsmithing (MS100) course materials. See both pathways in practice through the comprehensive jewellery diploma programmes, or start with Foundation Metalwork Skills. Related reading: How Jewellery Is Made and Precious Metals and Hallmarks.
Frequently asked questions
What is the difference between fabrication and casting?
Fabrication builds directly in metal prepared as sheet and wire — cut, folded, hammered and joined — and is best for one-off designs. Lost-wax casting carves a wax model, encases it in investment, melts the wax out and fills the hollow with molten metal; it is ideal for mass production.
Which is stronger, fabricated or cast jewellery?
Fabrication carries a quiet structural advantage: working the metal work-hardens it as the piece is made, so a fabricated piece is less easy to deform or damage while being worn.
What does gauge mean for sheet and wire?
Gauge is the standardised thickness scale shared by sheet and wire, and it runs numerically inverse: as the gauge number increases, the metal gets thinner and finer. Thickness is read directly with a gauge meter.
Also at JDMIS: Beginner Metalsmithing Course · Casting & Advanced Stone Setting course
Take casting further: the Advanced 3D Modelling & Production course (DD300) covers production-ready models for casting.
New to the bench? See what a full traditional metalsmithing foundation course covers — from fabrication vs casting decision to a finished silver ring.
Keep reading: the lost-wax casting process.
Explore further: find your Artisan Archetype — which maker are you? — or get an AI-guided course consultation.
Related reading: the silver clay guide, pure-silver jewellery without casting and how jewellery is made, the main manufacturing techniques.
The jeweller's saw frame and its blade are the most essential tools for cutting metal — and because the saw is used so constantly, it pays to invest in the best quality frame and blades available. Inferior blades only lead to frustration: they break easily. The idea of putting a blade in a frame under tension is old enough to have originated in ancient Rome.
Here is what actually matters at the bench: choosing the blade, stringing the frame correctly, cutting with the grain of the tool rather than against it, and knowing why blades snap.
Reading blade sizes
Saw blades cut precious, nonferrous and ferrous metals, and softer materials too — wood, shell, bone, plastics. They come numbered by size, where 8/0 is the finest and 14 the coarsest. Thin metals want fine blades; heavier metals want heavier blades. Most metalsmithing sits in the 3/0 to 1/0 range. Blades are sold by the dozen or the gross (twelve dozen), and they rust in humidity and heat — store them somewhere dry and airtight.
Stringing the frame
Inserting a blade is called stringing, and the sequence matters:
- Loosen the upper and lower thumbscrews to open their jaws.
- Insert the blade's upper end fully into the upper clamp, teeth pointing down towards the handle and outward, away from the back of the frame. Get this wrong and the saw cuts on the upstroke — badly.
- Loosen the back-frame thumbscrew and slide the frame so the blade's lower end just enters the lower jaws, then retighten the back screw.
- Hold the handle toward you, press the top of the frame against the bench edge and the handle against your chest — it feels awkward at first — and use that compression to seat the lower end into the lower jaws.
- While holding the pressure, tighten the lower thumbscrew. Release, and the frame's spring keeps the blade under tension.
Sawing: the working rules
- Always saw on the bench pin, with the metal held tight.
- Keep the blade perpendicular to the metal.
- Catch filings in the filing tray as they fall, and keep filings from different metals separate — they are saved and reclaimed.
- Teeth face down, so metal is removed only on the downward stroke.
- To start a cut (the kerf), place the blade against the metal's edge and draw it upward lightly a few times in the same spot — this groove stops the blade wandering when the real, downward strokes begin.
Blade breakage drops dramatically with a lubricant — plain beeswax run along the blade does the job.
Why blades break
The classic causes, in rough order of frequency: metal not held tightly on the bench pin; too much pressure, forward or downward; sharp changes of sawing direction; a blade clamped too loosely or too tightly; excessive speed; and blade freeze. Every one of them is a habit, not a mystery — which is why sawing is the first skill a metalsmith drills.
Piercing: interior patterns with no edge opening
Piercing is drilling and sawing combined into one technique. Drill a round hole inside the design area — hand drill or motorised — then thread the loose blade through that hole before stringing it onto the frame. Once strung, you can saw out patterns wholly inside the sheet, with no opening along the edge. Combined thoughtfully, drilling and piercing produce any patterned pierced work or fretwork a designer can draw — the kind of layered, openwork silver that makes people ask how it was cut.
Grounded in the JDMIS Metalsmithing (MS100) course materials. Learn these skills hands-on in Foundation Metalwork Skills and Experience; for where sawing fits in the whole construction process, see How Jewellery Is Made and Jewellery Findings Explained.
Frequently asked questions
Which way do the teeth of a jeweller's saw blade face?
Down towards the handle and outward, away from the back of the frame, so the saw removes metal on the downward stroke. Mounted the other way it cuts on the upstroke — badly.
What saw blade sizes suit metalsmithing?
Blades run from 8/0 (the finest) to 14 (the coarsest). Thin metals want fine blades and heavier metals heavier blades; most metalsmithing sits in the 3/0 to 1/0 range.
Why do jeweller's saw blades keep breaking?
The classic causes are metal not held tightly on the bench pin, too much pressure forward or downward, and sharp changes of direction. Breakage drops dramatically when the blade is lubricated — plain beeswax run along the blade does the job.
Explore further: find your Artisan Archetype — which maker are you? — or get an AI-guided course consultation.
Visual reference
An accomplished painter would never demand less than a beautiful frame for a magnum opus — and the same is true of a metalsmith and their jewellery. No matter how competent you are in every other aspect of the craft, a good finish is an absolute necessity to present a piece in its entirety. More than any other factor, the finish is the initial tip-off as to whether a piece has been well made.
Even the deliberately 'raw' look popular among contemporary jewellers is no excuse: it still requires an immaculate preliminary finish, because the surface must be prepared before the treatments and effects that create the desired outcome can be applied properly.
Sanding: the grit ladder
After hammering, soldering and everything else, a piece bears evidence of its formation — bumps, dents, scars, unsightly blobs. Files handle edges well, but for smoothness and consistency across wider surfaces the complementary process is sanding: wearing down inconsistencies with sandpaper until the surface is even.
The coarseness of sandpaper is its grit — lower numbers coarser, higher numbers finer. The correct method is a ladder: start with the coarsest grit necessary to remove the deepest imperfections, then move through increasingly finer grits, each one removing the impressions left by the previous. Skipping steps is visible; the scratches of a coarse grit always show through a too-fine finish.
Tools that keep sanding flat
- DIY sanding sticks — wrap and adhere sandpaper around small handheld planks and use them like files. Tightly-wrapped paper on a flat surface delivers a far more even cleanup on flat surfaces than fingers ever can, and it removes the uneven pressure your fingertips introduce.
- Split mandrels — tear sandpaper to size, insert one end into the split of the mandrel, wrap the rest, and mount it in the flex shaft. This combines sandpaper's flexibility with motorised speed. Stop periodically to inspect: over-sanding on a mandrel is easy, and it costs detail or structural thickness.
And the caution that belongs in capitals: never allow sandpaper to come into contact with a gemstone.
Polishing: the final touch
Polishing communicates a piece's beauty and desirability — eyes are drawn naturally to the sparkle of an immaculate, mirror-shine piece. Before modern machinery all polishing was done by hand; machines now take the majority, but remnants of the work still need a human touch.
Hand-polishing is rubbing a suitable textile — often leather, cotton or microfiber — coated with a polishing compound or abrasive paste over the piece until the desired effect appears. For hard-to-reach areas and inside corners there is thrumming: a mass of loose fibres, or string, charged with polishing compound, worked into interiors no finger could reach.
Buffing brings in felt discs coated with compound, attached to the flex shaft or polishing motor — speed and consistency for outside surfaces, always after the sanding ladder is truly finished. The finish is the last thing done and the first thing seen.
Grounded in the JDMIS Metalsmithing (MS100) course materials. Practise the full finishing sequence in Foundation Metalwork Skills and Experience; for the step just before it, see How to Bezel-Set a Cabochon — stones are set only after the piece is completely finished.
New to the bench? See what a full traditional metalsmithing foundation course covers — from professional finishing to a finished silver ring.
Frequently asked questions
How do you sand a jewellery piece correctly?
Work a grit ladder: start with the coarsest grit necessary to remove the deepest imperfections, then move through increasingly finer grits, each removing the impressions left by the previous. Skipping steps is visible — coarse scratches always show through a too-fine finish.
What does polishing do for a piece of jewellery?
Polishing communicates a piece's beauty and desirability — eyes are drawn naturally to the sparkle of an immaculate, mirror-shine piece. Machines now take the majority of the work, but parts of it still need the human touch.
Is sandpaper safe to use near gemstones?
No — never allow sandpaper to come into contact with a gemstone.
Explore further: find your Artisan Archetype — which maker are you? — or get an AI-guided course consultation.
Soldering is how metals are attached: joining similar or dissimilar metals using solder and heat. Solder — as a noun — is small pieces of metal alloy that melt and flow at a lower temperature than the metal of the parts being joined. It acts, in the course book's own words, like a glue to hold a piece together.
Three grades, one logic
The metalsmith generally works with Hard, Medium and Easy solder, in gold or silver. The harder the solder, the higher its melting temperature — always below the parent metals' melting point, but higher than the easier grades.
The reason for keeping all three in clearly marked, separate containers is sequencing: use hard solder for the earliest joints, then step down through medium to easy. Each later soldering session then melts only the new solder, never re-opening the joints already made. A complex piece can go through several firings intact precisely because the grades descend. (The family extends beyond the big three: extra-easy for repairs and final joins, very hard for enamelling.)
Flux: nothing flows without it
The word comes from the Latin fluxus, flow — and that is the whole job description. The temperatures that melt solder would instantly oxidise the metal surface, and oxide blocks flow. Flux acts as an oxygen inhibitor so solder enters the joint smoothly. It comes solid, powdered, pasted or liquid; borax powder, mixed into a paste with water, is the jewellery-supply-store classic — long-lasting and cheap. Commercial fluxes blend borax and boric acid with fluorides and potassium salts.
Technique at the torch
- The pieces to be joined must be clean and in perfect contact. Solder can never fill open spaces — a gap is a design flaw, not a soldering problem.
- Flux always. Without it the solder will not melt and flow.
- Heat the whole piece evenly, then bias slightly toward the joint — solder is drawn toward the heat, so the joint area guides the flow.
- The moment solder has flowed evenly, stop the heat. Wait a few seconds, quench in water, and soak in pickle to clean.
- Clean, unused solder always melts before already-melted solder — useful when touching up a joint.
Reticulation: the deliberate overheat
Reticulation adds surface texture to silver or gold by deliberately overheating it, producing a rich, somewhat random texture. Throughout the process the metal sits at the edge of melting — it may actually melt through and form holes, and the course's advice is to incorporate them: they only add to the haphazard effect. It is the one place in metalsmithing where losing control is the technique.
Fusing: no solder at all
Fusing takes gold or silver pieces to the approach of their melting point, so the outer surface liquefies and the pieces join directly — no solder, a very organic, rough feel, and, in the course book's phrasing, great fun with scrap off-cuts. The rule from soldering carries over unchanged: the pieces must be clean.
Grounded in the JDMIS Metalsmithing (MS100) course materials. Learn the torch hands-on in Foundation Metalwork Skills and Experience and Intermediate Techniques and Stone Setting. Related reading: Annealing and Pickling Silver and Precious Metals and Hallmarks.
Try it hands-on: Silver Clay Jewellery Workshop in Singapore · Silver Jewellery Experience at Takashimaya
Frequently asked questions
What are the three grades of silver solder?
Hard, Medium and Easy. The harder the solder, the higher its melting temperature — always below the parent metals' melting point. Sequencing from hard down to easy means each later firing melts only the new solder, never re-opening joints already made.
Why is flux used when soldering jewellery?
The temperatures that melt solder would instantly oxidise the metal surface, and oxide blocks flow. Flux acts as an oxygen inhibitor so the solder enters the joint smoothly.
Can solder fill a gap between two pieces of metal?
No. Solder can never fill open spaces — the pieces must be clean and in perfect contact. A gap is a design flaw, not a soldering problem.
Explore further: find your Artisan Archetype — which maker are you? — or get an AI-guided course consultation.
Visual reference
A stone setting is any system that holds a stone permanently and securely in place while displaying it. In the commercial trade, mounting (building the metal parts that support the stones) and setting (pushing that metal over the stones) are two separate specialist jobs. That division of labour exists for good reason, but it also hides a truth worth knowing: with one well-understood technique — the bezel — a metalsmith can set almost anything without depending on a specialist.
This guide walks through the box-bezel method taught in JDMIS metalsmithing classes, step by step, the way it happens at the bench.
What a bezel is
A bezel is a strip of metal that surrounds a stone and is pressed down over its contour to secure it. It is the natural setting for cabochons — stones with a smooth domed crown and no facets — and it adapts just as well to faceted stones or even found objects such as coins. Designers keep returning to it because a clean bezel reads as a classic: a band of precious metal hugging the stone's own shape.
Before any metal is cut, the working rules that govern every kind of setting are worth memorising:
- The stone must be secure.
- Glue should never be used.
- The setting should complement the stone.
- The choice of setting should relate to the design.
- The setting's finish must look and feel professional.
Step 1: Fit the bezel to the stone
Start with a strip of metal — silver, gold, copper or brass all work. The width of the strip should cover roughly the bottom third of the stone. Make it too wide rather than too narrow; excess width is easily filed and sanded away, but a short bezel has nothing to grip with.
Bend the strip around the stone until it fits snugly. A proper fit is critical — the whole technique depends on it. Where the ends overlap, saw through both thicknesses at once so the two ends meet precisely, then solder the bezel closed with a tiny piece of hard silver solder. Quench it and soak it in pickle.
Now test the bezel by pressing it over the stone. If it is too big, cut a sliver out at the soldered seam and close it again. If it is too small, put it on a mandrel and stretch it — testing frequently, because oversizing it is easy. The actual setting of the stone, later, is very easy if the bezel fits well.
Step 2: Solder the bezel to a backing, then saw and file
Sand both edges of the bezel — top and bottom — flat and clean on sandpaper, checking that the shape still matches the stone. Place it on a sheet of metal slightly larger than the bezel, then flux, solder, quench and pickle again.
With a jeweller's saw, remove the excess backing metal outside the bezel, then clean the seam with a bastard file and sand the whole thing smooth. One shortcut from the bench: if the bezel is being set directly onto a finished design — a ring band, a pendant body — it does not need a separate backing at all; solder it straight onto the piece.
Step 3: Set the stone — last, not first
Press the stone into place. Push the metal over it with a pusher or burnisher, always working on opposite sides, so the stone stays centred and level as the bezel closes over the curve of the dome.
The sequencing rule matters more than beginners expect: set stones only when the entire piece is finished, including any sulphurising and the final polish. Every file stroke, hammer blow or polish after setting is a chance to crack or abrade the stone.
Step 4: Smooth and burnish
If the bezel edge needs truing, use a fine needle file, taking care not to catch the stone. Then burnish the setting to bring up its final finish — a burnisher compresses the surface of the metal and leaves a polish that files and papers cannot.
Beyond the bezel
Channel settings, pavé, prongs — specialist techniques each worth their own training. What the bezel offers is generality: master this one push-metal-over-stone discipline and the range of pieces you can complete end-to-end widens dramatically. It is no accident that bezel-setting a cabochon sits near the end of the foundation metalsmithing syllabus — it is where fabrication and finishing skills all converge on a single, quiet click of metal over stone.
Grounded in the JDMIS Metalsmithing (MS100) course materials. To learn these techniques hands-on with guidance, see JDMIS's Metalsmithing with Basic Stone Settings course and the Foundation Metalwork Skills certificate. For setting styles beyond the bezel, read Stone Setting Styles and How to Make a Ring Stone Setting.
Frequently asked questions
What is a bezel setting?
A strip of metal that surrounds a stone and is pressed down over its contour to secure it. It is the natural setting for cabochons — smooth domed stones with no facets — and adapts just as well to faceted stones or found objects such as coins.
Can you set a stone with glue?
No. The working rules of stone setting are explicit: the stone must be secure, and glue should never be used. The metal itself holds the stone.
How wide should a bezel strip be?
The strip should cover roughly the bottom third of the stone, and it is better too wide than too narrow: excess width is easily filed and sanded away, while a short bezel has nothing to grip with.
Also at JDMIS: Casting & Advanced Stone Setting course
New to the bench? See what a full traditional metalsmithing foundation course covers — from bezel setting to a finished silver ring.
Keep reading: cabochons vs faceted cuts.
Keep reading: the major forms in jewellery design drawing.
Explore further: find your Artisan Archetype — which maker are you? — or get an AI-guided course consultation.