New Use for Snap Sets & Viking Knit Scraps

by Lady Mockingbird.
(Upstate New York, USA)

Snap settings and lab created gemstones are a wonderful way to get really excellent looking gems into your jewelry work, without adding excessive cost to your materials list.

Front view

If you solder, then adding these settings into basic ring shanks is pretty simple. I don’t solder though, and I’ve only used snap settings a few times in the past at the request of special clients. But I do have a couple of them on hand, that I intended to use with some lovely lab created rubies.

From the side, you can just see the bottom smooth edge of the snap set as it will slide over the finger without any wires from the mounting touching the skin.

The thing with lab created gems is that the molecular makeup of lab gems is identical to natural stones. So you get a stunning stone, flawless color and clarity but prices are lower than on mined stones.
I’ve found though, that without using solder, adding snap settings into wire sculpted pieces can be a challenge. First to make them sit nicely, and second to do so without making the wire holding the setting in place look ugly, and third to prevent the tension needed to hold the setting in place firmly from pulling on the prongs and loosening the stones.

Here’s another Trichinopoly scrap ring where I used a Celtic Knot component to give me a larger ring size with the small scrap. I also added chains to make it a bracelet combo. Antiqued to show off the weave

The snap set I used on this ring fixes problem number 3 by having two layers. The top one has the prongs to hold the stone, and the bottom one is open enough to allow wire to travel through both from side to side and front to back. The ring pictured here has a shank I made by flattening a short section of Trichinopoly chain, (AKA Viking Knit).

What it looks like worn.

Then using more wire to weave the two ends together while simultaneously affixing the setting in place. The last step was to add some 2mm ab Swarovski crystals to add sparkle and frame the lab created ruby. This ring was my first go at doing this so there’s a tiny bit of wonkiness to it, but I’m still pretty chuffed that the first try went so smoothly.

Also, I’m really happy I figured out what to do with leftovers from the Viking Knit chains I weave. I always make a little more chain than I think I might need, since it is far easier to cut off a bit of excess, than it is to try and make a chain longer if you’ve accidentally made it too short and you don’t figure it out until after its gone through the drawplate, no?

Lady Mockingbird
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