How A Custom Piece Goes From A Sketch To A Casting

Sketch: The Cheapest Place To Be Wrong

The factory states its design team works from basic napkin sketches upward. A drawing costs an email to change. Use this stage to settle proportions and stone sizes, not to admire a rendering.

CAD: Where The Cost Is Decided

The 3D model fixes stone seats, wall thickness and gallery openings. That is where metal weight, and therefore most of the price, is set. A model also makes the piece reproducible by a computer-controlled process later, which is the difference between a repeat order and a rebuild.

Wax: The Last Cheap Change

Molten wax is injected into the mould cavity under pressure. A wax can be held, slipped onto a finger and rejected for the cost of an afternoon. If a shank feels thin or a shoulder feels wide, this is the moment it is discovered, and almost nobody asks for a wax as often as they should.

Casting And Filing: Where Metal Stops Being Reversible

The wax is invested and burned out, and the piece is cast in the specified karat. Filing then removes surplus metal and smooths the surface. From here on, a change means starting again from the model.

Setting And Polishing: The Part That Cannot Be Automated

Prong, bezel, channel and pave work is done by hand at the bench. On multi-stone pieces the sequence is laid out and approved before the first stone goes in, because unsetting a row is far more expensive than rearranging one.

What To Ask For At Each Stage

A dimensioned drawing at stage one. A render plus the estimated finished metal weight at stage two. A photograph of the wax on a sizer at stage three. A photograph of the stone layout before setting on anything with a row or a colour sequence.