Completed [The Midnight Gem] Last Minute Commissions

[Kelski]

Timestamp: 50th of Spring, 519 A.V.

Kelski was just getting ready to close up the shop for the day when she heard the outer bell ring, signaling a customer. Someone had walked into the shop just before the closing bell. The Kelvic had given Ebon the day off because he had some last-minute business to take care of in town and she was manning the front desk of the jewelry store. It gave her a clear view of the woman that walked through the doorway and an instant recognition of her.

The Jeweler studied the man in front of her as he approached her counter and smiled at her. "Your reputation proceeds you. I was hoping it was not too late in the day to ask after a commission piece, for my wife." He said kindly. His voice was soft and he had no demand in his tone, only polite inquiry. Kelski didn't know who he was or what reputation he was speaking of, but she smiled at him nonetheless.

“I gladly take on commissions. What did you have in mind?” She asked with equal politeness and interest. Business was business after all. She hoped it was something challenging though.

The man unfolded a sketch of paper. It looked like a child had done the drawing and moments later the man revealed it had been the hand of a child. “My daughter sketched this for my wife. She’s going to a rather elaborate affair and doesn’t want to be outdone by other women at the event. My daughter, who is eight, said she needed a big elaborate flowered necklace with matching earrings to wear to enhance the new dress she has. The dress is a sort of strawberry pink trimmed in red. I’ve had this massive hunk of carnelian forever. In fact, it was a doorstop in my nursery as a child. I was hoping you could use it in the necklace.” He said, showing her the sketch and then pulling out a gemstone that had been tucked under his arm wrapped in burlap unobtrusively. It was a lovely deep red chalcedony that Kelski knew would cut nicely into rounds.

The Sketch itself was …. Garish. It was of a huge flower with six petals leading off with a stray petal to another half-opened flower of three petals and then two more stray petals up until a chain connected. Filling in every inch of the space around the flower petals were round brilliant cut stones. The petals themselves were two-fold… one part a gemstone in a marquis cut and the other part a looping metal that surrounded it that was embedded in channel cut brilliant rounds. It would be a heavy expensive thing, even if the gentleman did give her the carnelian to cut. She’d still have to charge him for his time.

“Will this be silver or gold? And the Carnelian is a nice chalcedony and should work, but what other color and stone would you like as filler?” She asked, gesturing to the other spaces. Surely with a pink and red dress, the entirety of the necklace wouldn’t be the red gemstone.

“I was thinking diamonds to glitter white and bright pink stones of another sort. Do you have anything in sufficient quantity that would work?” He asked.

[Kelski]

Kelski thought for a moment then rose. “I’ll be back in a moment.” She headed back to the vault, opened it, and slipped inside. She retrieved two trays of cut rounds of tourmaline that was a bright almost watermelon pink in color. “This is tourmaline. It’s a valuable stone that is said to give insight and clarity in discussions. It might do her well to have a necklace made in part all of tourmaline in her business dealings at grand events.” Kelski said, glancing at the man to see what he thought.

He nodded pleased. Kelski wanted to visually flinch. Pink and red? She couldn’t think of a more awful combination. “Now… lets discuss cost. You want this necklace of significant size, and a set of matching earrings with three petal flowers and a teardrop of rounds? The whole thing is going to cost you a lot of Miza’s, even if you do supply the chalcedony.” She started in, thinking quietly in her head, tallying costs and trying to determine what would be a fair but firm price.

The man beat her to the punch. He quoted an outrageous sum, once more reiterated that it was for his wife, and Kelski nodded. “Yes, I can do it for that. When do you need it?” She asked, knowing this was important too.

“I need it by her birthday… five days from now. I know it’s a rush but I only decided on this today.” He added, shaking his head.

Kelski nodded at him. “I can do it for that, and the sum will cover the costs of my metal, cutting, polishing, and setting the stones. I can easily have it by the day you desire. I’ll need half down now, the carnelian left with me, and the other half when you pick it up.” She added.

He agreed, left a bag of coins on her counter besides the red chalcedony and told her he’d be back for the finished pieces at the appointed time. Kelski nodded, assured him it would be ready, and set to work immediately.

The first thing she did was take the crude sketch, get a fresh parchment, and plan out the layout a bit better in a way a jeweler could follow. Sketching carefully, she put the crude child’s sketch into order in a more adult fashion translated to a more jewelry friendly design. Then she redesigned the flower slightly so she could make it six petaled, then three petaled, then add in additional petals and repeat the pattern in earrings that would match without being garish.

Kelski knew the sketch must have sentimental value to the man, so when she was done, she carefully folded it and laid it aside to put in the bottom of the box she gave him that held the final items.

[Kelski]

Next, she decided she’d form the petals out of wax and relief cast them in sand. Taking out a chunk of jeweler’s wax, Kelski began to carve it into the pleasing form she felt was just right for the petal. It looked like an arrow with the center portion cut out. It was a point on either end, but thickened near the tip of the petal.

Carving quickly but confidently – this being an easier step in jewelcrafting – Kelski dug out the channel she’d set the diamonds and tourmaline in as she went, making sure with her calipers that the dept was even and smooth. The channeled diamonds and tourmaline would start small on the ends and the brilliant cut stones with flat backs would graduate to slightly bigger until they ended in the biggest at the flowers tip.

It would be a lovely touch.

Kelski decided she’d pack the set with so much technical skill that it would offset the garishness of the piece and hopefully preserve her reputation. Not that, indeed, she needed one preserved for Sunberth. How long would she be staying? Not long at all, if things worked out. Kelski still needed to look for a captain, find a buyer for the Midnight Gem, and pack. But otherwise, with Gilthas urging her on, she was going to change cities and hopefully start over in Zeltiva. If things worked out, this project would be her last.

The thought made her strangely happy.

The whole thing ran the risk of garish for certain, but it was as the customer ordered. By the time she was done with the sketch, she knew she needed twenty-four metal petals set with channeled diamonds and tourmaline and five large almost black carnelians, twenty-six marquis carnelians, fifty-seven small white diamond brilliant cuts, and thirty-three tourmaline brilliant cut stones.

The diamonds and tourmaline she’d channel in the petals she didn’t count. She hadn’t worked out the arrangement yet. Plus she had to see what she had in stock first, or the rest of her week was going to be spent at the cutting wheel decidedly cutting perhaps hundreds of tiny brilliant cut rounds.

When the carving was done, Kelski quickly set up the lost wax casting on the petal she had created, got the slurry ready, and poured the mold. Then she let the mold cool, broke out the cast petal, and polished it up to a high shine. The petal had been cast in steel, not because she was making the necklace out of steel but because she was using the steel as a sand cast mold in the next step, something she could repeat over and over again.

She pulled out her small sand frame, tamped oil sand in it, and carefully fixed it up to begin the pour on the petals she’d need. Laying the second frame over the first, Kelski added sprues, molded a pour channel, and tamped the top layer in. Then she broke the frame apart, pulled out the pattern, and put the frame back together. She started her gold on the forge in a crucible and waited for it to liquefy enough to be a nice pour consistency.

Kelski found the work meditative and let her mind drift as she worked. Repeatedly preparing the flower petal molds over and over again was time consuming on the front end. However, it saved a great deal of time in the long run because she didn’t form the petals by hand. Cooling time was minimal after she poured.

[Kelski]

Kelski was able to assemble the correct number she needed in just a few bells. Setting the mold aside, she laid out the petals on the counter the way she saw them coming together and nodded to herself. They were big enough to form a strong comfortable frame for the brilliants that would surround them. And it would be easy to branch out comfortable support arms from each petal to cluster the backed brilliants to. Kelski wanted to make sure the necklace – as heavy as it would be – could lay comfortably on a woman’s bare neck without backing.

With that part of the necklace designed, Kelski set out to put the polishing wheel on her lap and began working on polishing up the gold petals. She started with a harsher grit wheel, setting it in motion with her foot pump and worked down to find diamond dust to add a lavish sparkle to each petal. Then, she went to the vault, pulled out already cut diamonds and tourmaline from the trays she’d shown the client, and began setting them in the channels with her jeweler’s glue and soldering iron.

Slowly, surely, each petal came to life, with half of them glittering white with diamonds and half glittering bright pink with the tourmaline. When they were done, Kelski raided the rest of her vault, pulling all the rest of the brilliant cut diamonds and tourmaline she could get onto her work table to see if she had enough.

Thankfully she did. In her spare time, the Kelvic often took the time to cut up small gems that were pieces of larger projects, turning them into materials she could work with later in other projects. A commitment of time after major projects were over often saved her long-term time in the future when she had plenty of stock to make up orders like this custom set quickly.

Once she had all the petals poured, Kelski used the remaining amount of gold to pour into wire molds that were larger in size. She was going to make a thick chain to hang the necklace on all out of gold as well. And she wanted that wire ready to go for when she needed to rest her hands during the cutting of the Carnelian which would be a huge process in and of itself. The Kelvic only hoped the woman wearing this necklace would be a larger structured person. It was going to be heavy… very heavy an she was going to know it was hanging about her neck for certain.

[Kelski]

Moving back to the main piece, Kelski had to flip all the petals onto their faces, and from there she started soldering them together with her flame torch, linking them in strong bonds that were reinforced with a coating of flux to make the metal behave itself.

From there, she took thick gold wire – thinner than the necklace links would be and something she already had made – and made the supporting branches. Then she put a nice lap wheel on her lapidary and began grinding the points off of most of the diamonds – saving the dust for further projects that needed sanding. She would mount each diamond and tourmaline that had its point removed into a nice single gallery prong bezel. She’d leave the backs open for more light, of course.

Bezels could be molded or formed.

And in this case, since the stones were various sizes, Kelski would have to make them. She picked 18 gauge round wire, cut pieces of it the same size as the rounds, and carefully began bending them into rings and soldering them together. Then she notched each ring at the cardinal directions – north south east and west – to set prongs into on the outside of the ring.

Then she cut prongs that were the same diameter as the rings. With four prongs each, she filed grooves in the rings, set the prongs, then set the stones in the prongs after grooving them to match the individual stones. Bending the prongs over with a prong pusher, Kelski then cut off the prongs just past where the crown of the stone started, and carefully filed them all smooth.

She repeated this process dozens and dozens of times for the diamonds and tourmalines. Kelski took bells doing it, eating up most of one day and not even looking at the red carnelian on her other workbench that had to be cut into marquis and brilliant rounds to add to the settings. All and all, laying out the petals, adding the channel settings, crafting the bezels and gallery rings, setting the already cut tourmalines and diamonds took her two full days. Ebon had to take up the slack and man the shop while Kelski worked around the clock.

When she was finally done with what she considered the secondary stones, it was time to take a look at what else needed to be done. And that meant she needed to cut into the carnelian that the customer had brought in. She’d left enough gaps in the main necklace to pepper the settings with dark red stones. And by design – from the child’s sketch – each flower had a large marquise set into the gap where the hollowed-out arrow formed its base. That meant she’d have to cut the marquis stones first, then take all the scrap she could salvage from the carnelian and turn them into brilliant rounds.

Before she did that, Kelski opted to get a good night’s sleep.

Continued in: [The Midnight Gem] Cutting Rare Gemstones

Word Count: 2522

[Kelski]

G R A D E S

Kelski-

Business +2, Drawing +1, Carving +1, Metalsmithing +3

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