Tube setting finally

Before I started to drill and set my stones into the flowers, I made a practice pendant. I worked so long already on the flowers that screwing them up in this final process would have been devastating to me.
This is a topaz of some sort, 6mm stone and one of the rings I had previously made. I soldered the tube setting to a back piece, and sawed and filed for a smooth finish. I soldered the filed tube setting to the inside of the ring. Then I sucessfully set the stone! YAY!

I really like this little pendant, I think I will just string it on a chain right through the ring.

I drilled out the middle of the flower with a burr bit, which proved to be quite a challenge. The soldered wire behaves nothing like sheet, that's for sure. Then I filed inside the hole until the tube fit into it snuggly on all joints. I soldered the tubes in place, and then off I was to the drill press.

Burring out the center of the tube is very picky, too. I started with smaller burr bits than I needed and worked my way to a larger size three times. It is easy to overdo it.

You can see in the close up that I could have done a neater job, but it was harder than I thought.

Next week we will do bezel setting.