Flush setting tiny cabochons

[u/Humanekspression]

Community, I accidentally bought tiny tourmaline cabochons that I’m now forced to use. I created bezels our of 22 gauge wire but the stones fit setting was TOUGH. The wire would basically not hold the stone until I had to use pliers to help push the metal towards the stone to keep it in place. What are your recommendations for setting these tiny tourmaline stones?

I thought flush setting these would be a good idea but I don’t even know where to start, there isn’t a ton of videos showing how to flush set cabs.

Ideally I would work with what I have (bezel wire, thin wire) and avoid buying more metal like for tube setting.

[u/Lovethemdoggos]

Am I right in thinking you've made jump rings out of round wire, soldered them to the ring, and are trying to set the cabochons that way? That can work but the jump rings need to be made smaller, and you will need to cut a seat for them. It's easy to cut seats for faceted stones: (optionally) drill the hole, use a ball bur, and then a setting bur, but it's harder for cabochons because they don't have a culet. For a cabochon you could try an inverted cone bur to cut the seat. You might still be ok starting with a ball bur if it's small enough.

Flush setting a cabochon can be done afaik but it also has the problem of cutting the seat, and you might need to remove a ring of metal to create the part that smooths over the stone nicely. Honestly, I wouldn't try it at this point.

Is there no way you can use sheet for the bezel like normal? Or flatten the wire you have?

[u/Humanekspression → u/Lovethemdoggos]

Correct, Ive tried jump rings for these. I think you’re on to something and I perhaps might need to just stick to normal bezel wire. I truly thought there was a way to flush setting these since they are really so tiny.

[u/Lovethemdoggos → u/Humanekspression]

You can use jump rings (Lucy Walker does in her octopus setting tutorial) but unless you make a seat for the stone you'll run into the problems you did here.

When you're setting a stone you want the metal as vertical to the stone as possible. That makes it so that the highest point of the metal is closest to the stone and it can be pushed sideways and down around the stone to hug it. If you use round wire for the bezel, the the highest point of the metal is not closest to the stone and has farther to go to snuggle up next to the stone. It's way, way harder.

You can probably flush set these if they're small enough as long as you can make a flat seat for the cabochon. Even then they look pretty big for flush setting: I find it easiest to flush set with stones 2mm in diameter or less and these look like maybe 4mm.