Completed [Painted Sky Jewelry] The Peridot Frog II

[Kelski]

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Continued from: [The Painted Sky] The Peridot Frog I

Timestamp: 1st of Spring, 520 A.V.

Kelski woke the next morning curled around Dessarian, content with the world. The Kelvic didn’t want to get up, but she had things to do and today was a new season. She often got up before the sun and she knew he’d been out late dealing with getting the training area up and running. She stretched slowly, left a lazy kiss on his forehead, and climbed out of bed quietly. She padded barefoot into her workshop wearing an oversized nightshirt of silk, and took a seat at her bench. She picked up the pear cut peridot and examined it a moment with a critical eye.

“I do good work.” She said sleepily and then smiled at the vanity.

She trailed a finger through the solitaires she’d also created. They were made of peridot scraps from the big cut, emeralds for darker shades, and zircon and diamond for a scattering of color variety. She looked at the things she’d left laying on the bench. There was a large chunk of wax for carving and two rough diamonds for the eyes. She was making an oversized frog ring, one that had a peridot mounted on its back, solitaires set in its skin, and two diamonds as eyes. And best of all? It needed to stand up on its own when it wasn’t wrapped around a woman’s finger.

She was crazy to take such commissions, but the money was good. The money was the best… and Kelski needed coin right now. She felt responsible for the lives with her. Men, women, and children depended on the Meraki to succeed and for that to happen she needed the coin flowing freely. Her mage guild would never get up and running unless they had the infrastructure. Infrastructure took time, energy and effort. And, for a jeweler, the coin took patrons. This man, with his crazy stand-up ring, was a potential patron. And if his wife liked the gift, she would show it off… and others would come now that the road was done.

The truth of it all caused Kelski to smile. She pushed off from the bench, fetched her magical backpack, checked its contents, and stripped off the nightshirt. She tossed the backpack out onto the balcony and then shifted. Pouncing on it as a Sea Eagle, she flapped mighty wings and gained altitude to head up into the sky.

The trip to Deer Valley and the marshland she’d staked out took time. She flew in circles around in wider and wider loops – not only in the direction of the marsh but in wider overlocking concentric circles to scout the whole twenty acres. It was for exercise and security. And happily, she spotted some of her people already out working. She cried to Dawson who looked up and waved from their fields. Djinn was down there too, walking a stream probably working out some sort of irrigation project. Sona was out cataloging their timber piles, no doubt planning her cuts for the day. They had more than enough wood for another addition to the Manor, which made Kelski infinitely happy. The Gem would grow… and grow soon.

[Kelski]

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She circled wider, coming upon the marshland and easily spotting her pit traps. The Kelvic dove lower, back winged, and gently set her backpack down. She landed in a simple way, fluffed her feathers, and transformed. Uncaring of her nudity – it was a warm morning – and began to check the two bucket traps. The first one was disappointingly empty, and Kelski muttered under her breath. She needed a live frog to borrow for a while… not to hurt… not to eat. She was here to get a model so her sculpt could be realistic.

Kelski made a face at the empty bucket and stalked down the tall line of flashing she’d partially buried in the ground to form a migration barrier that would funnel any amphibian traffic into buckets at either end of the traps. Barefoot, naked, the Kelvic stalked down the flashing line, not hopeful that her trap at the other end would be successful.

Peering in, she was surprised to see numerous eyes peered back up at her from the bottom of the bucket trap. There was a small turtle, what looked like a tiny lizard with smooth wet skin, and … and… three frogs! Bravely she reached in, liberated the turtle, freed the lizard looking thing… a salamander she thought… and fished around until she managed to grab the biggest frog. She studied him carefully while gripping him gently and the thing croaked at her. At least she thought it was a boy. Its deep voice suggested such things.

She carried it back to her backpack, stuck her free hand in to fish around for the big glass jar, and put the frog in it, securing the top with a ring and sealed-tight lid that had holes punched in it. She returned the frog to her backpack, then returned to the trap to free the other two faster frogs. Then, carefully, she pulled the flashing out of the ground and rolled it up tight securing it with a thick braid of twine. It went back into her backpack. She then pulled the buckets up from their pits in the ground by their handles, and double stacked them to slide them back into the backpack as well. Then, using her folding shovel, she assembled it and carefully filled in the two end pits where the buckets had been fit down into the ground deep enough a frog or other sort of creepy crawly couldn’t climb out.

Once the ground was relatively smooth again… including the flashing trench filled in.. Kelski stretched her muscles, cleaned off her shovel in the marsh, and put it back into the backpack. Feeling more awake now and ready to hit the workshop, she tossed the backpack high into the air, shifted into her eagle form and caught it mid-flighty as she took off for home.

The flight back was slow, leisurely and had her thinking about just how she was going to form the frog ring. No Jeweler actually carved gold. They carved wax – a far easier substance to mold – and fiddled and farted with it until it formed the shape they wanted. She could even carve limbs and warm the wax slightly so the limbs could be molded like clay for a perfect shape. The trick was turning the wax into gold. What she needed to do was carve the frog, get its shape perfect, make the voids in its body for the solitaires to flush mount and then craft it into a mold to pour gold into.

[Kelski]

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Kelski winged home, landed on the balcony with a graceless thump, and shifted. She picked up the backpack, headed into her sleeping chamber to dress and hit her workshop. Dessarian was long gone, having headed downstairs to more than likely break his fast and get his own day started. She padded around the suite barefoot until she actually got dressed. Then she hit the workshop with her captured prize in its glass jar in tow. She left the jar on the counter by a couple of likely looking blocks of jeweler’s wax and got out her set of carving tools.

She studied the frog intently – as if she’d use it for a morphing form – and turned the glass jar over and over, slowly, not to torture the animal. She watched it croak, noted the way its toes gripped the jar, and learned the curves and planes of its body. In this, her morphing helped her. She had an eye for detail and didn’t want to just do an artistic rendition of a frog.

To her, that was a lazy man or woman’s way. She wanted to reproduce the frog down to the minute detail. And so, to do that, she took out her sketchbook and started working on detailed studies of its feet, carefully capturing the splay of its five digits and the webbing between them. She noted its nails in the sketch, then captured the smooth almost non-texture of its skin. She did studies of its eyes, sketching the round globes slightly raised. Kelski admired the tiny nose slits and the way its throat expanded and contracted. She even took notes on how its jaw articulated and how the frog almost had a tail… almost… with a slightly pointy tailbone.

It was a wonder, this tiny creature, that lived in and out of the water. And she started to see what the guild man’s wife saw in them. And so, it was a few bells later and a lot of sketching – enough to finish off one of her sketchbooks – that she was ready to carve. The frog was a series of triangles that met in weird places. Its waist was tiny and its body slim. Bit by bit she removed wax, slicing it off, pulling the image of the frog she had in her mind out of the block of wax.

The wax made her job easy. She was no carver that could apply the same principles to stone, not even soft stone like soapstone. Instead, she had leeway with wax so if she took too much or something broke, she could heat up a little wax with Reimancy and add more to try again. It made her job crafting the frog simpler than it would have been for a more skilled carver. But luckily, she coaxed a very pretty likeness of the real frog in the jar beside her from the wax beneath her hands.

When the rough shape was done, Kelski spent a great deal of time with hot tools smoothing down the frogs shape and making it as realistic as possible. Then she took a sharp knife and counted the solitaire rounds, noted how many she’d cut of what diameter, and began carefully carving out the cavities the solitaires would fit into. She scattered them around, planning an ombre affect on the piece that would showcase greens and whites and the shades between. Then she took her massive peridot and fit it to the frogs back.

[Kelski]

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That was a more drawn-out process since she had to relief carve a place in the back of the ring for the stone to set securely. It had to be nestled down enough that it could be securely affixed with prongs, yet stand up high enough to be showcased and have enough of its pavilion exposed to refract light. Kelski carved out, refitted the gem, pulled the gem, carved out more wax, and kept up the process until she had the gem set to her liking and had the prongs planned out.

Then she placed the gem in tongs, lit her alcohol burner, and passed the peridot through the heat multiple times, gently warming the stone up until it was of significant temperature to lay the gem in place a final time and have the wax melt gently to perfectly accommodate its shape. Droplets of excess wax melted off, and Kelski carefully scraped them from the finished frog and re-smoothed the skin where the droplets had flowed. Kelski then made slight marks in the otherwise flawless wax of the frog’s back where she would place her prongs.

The Kelvic took a break, grabbed some breakfast downstairs, and then returned with a fresh eye. That gave her time to carve the eye sockets – lumps that rose up from the frogs triangular head – and to carve its feet and toes, including the webbing. That took most of the afternoon and when she was done Kelski was tired. She saved the next step until the next morning after another scouting trip.

The next step was one she was familiar with. She added sprues to the frog’s head, feet and one for each toe to provide a channel for the liquid gold, then she mixed up plaster, cast the wax frog with its sprue channels into a mold, and let it harden. While it was hardening, she polished all the gems and sealed them with a protective sealant, and got them ready to be added.

Once the mold was hardened, she mixed up a small batch of mold release – an oil that was designed to withstand the molten temperature of gold and fired up her forge. There she loaded a small gold ingot into her crucible, let it heat, and when it was ready she filled the mold with it. She gave the mold a hard tap – once, twice – with her tongs and then let it sit for a few bells before she dropped it in a bucket of water. The molded plaster melted with the watery contact – designed to do so while still withstanding high temperatures of liquid metal – and when enough time had passed for the cement to melt, Kelski fished around in the bucket to pluck out the fully formed solid gold frog ring. It still had sprues of metal hanging off its feet, so she had to take a small jewelry saw and remove them, tossing the excess gold into the scrap bucket to be re-melted into another ingot when she had enough.

Then, she took the frog to her wheel and began to seriously polish the ring. Once the ring was re-polished, Kelski lit her alcohol torch, clamped her metal iron ring mandrel into her vice, and slipped the frog ring on its metal form. She hit the gold with the torch, heating it enough to be pliable, and began to shape it around the mandrel at the size 7 notch the woman’s finger fell at size-wise. When she was satisfied the heating and gentle bending had been enough to make the ring comfortable and grippy around one’s finger, she pulled the gold ring off the mandrel and adjusted it so that the back feet could rest and cause the ring to balance upright.

[Kelski]

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Kelski took the ring back to the buffing wheel, re-polished where she’d heated it and the flame had dulled the polish, and began those steps again. Then she returned it to her main workbench, examined the tray of solitaires, and looked over the piece. She put on her magnification glasses, and began to work on the frog once more.

Flush settings, sometimes called rubbed or Svefra settings, was a minimalistic design that resulted in a sleek piece of jewelry. Setting stones in flush were simple, quick, and economical so it could make a piece overall cheaper. Plus, it was easier to clean and would snag less on outside forces like fabric because one could run their fingers over the gold and if the flush setting was properly seated, the stone would be untouched. However, flush settings took precise crafting of seats. If the seat was cut too deep, to wide, too low or any number of screw ups, it wouldn’t simply work and often times ruined the piece. She also couldn’t use them on soft gems because the stone needed some pressure to be set. Sapphires, diamonds, and rubies took well to it. If she were careful, she could use emeralds and peridots, but it would take all her skill as a Master. Too much pressure in doing flush settings could snap a gemstone, and then she might not easily get it out…

These types of settings didn’t rely on prongs or adhesive to hold them in. That was one of the reasons they were considered advanced techniques. It was an ideal situation for making a spray of color over a piece of jewelry like Kelski was planning.

They needed to be done with strong round stones, not oval square, or anything with sharp corners that would snap under the pressure. The basic concept was to drop the stone into a tight hole in the metal and have it ‘snap’ into place in a small internal channel that was cut with a bud bur on her drill press. Brilliant cut solitaires were required with very thin to medium girdles which made it easier to ‘snap’ them into the narrow space. Pavilions were kept to a minimum since no light needed to be reflected through the stone and the flush setting needed to be as shallow as possible with still covering over the stone.

Kelski put the ring in her portable vice, got out her bur drills, and set them up on her press. She whirled the press with her foot pedal and began the tedious process of opening up the hole sand tapering them on the inside. It was an exact mechanical science – the drilling of metal to an exact diameter – and she was careful, stopping often to check with calipers that her measurements weren’t off.

Once all the holes were burred out, Kelski took the ring back to the bench, polished up all the holes by hand, and then began fittings tones over the holes and gently ‘tapping’ them into the burred space with a pop that locked the stone into place. They were easy in, but the metal would have to be melted to get them out since it was the body of the ring acting as a setting and not an actual physical setting like a system of prongs. She added no adhesives. No Master Jeweler worth her weight would have. Instead, she popped little stones in a very specific order into their flush settings and was proud when she finished that not a single one chipped and broke.

When that was done, she polished again, then set the diamonds in the Frog’s yes, then soldered on the four-prong mount for the pear-shaped peridot for the frogs back. A final polish and the ring were done. She balanced it up on the bench to make sure it would stand on its own. It did. And indeed, she was very pleased at it, so she sat at her sketchbook and sketched the design completed so she’d have a record.

Her final act was to put a maker’s mark on the bottom of one of the back feet. Her symbol was a tiny stylized feather.

http://www.mizahar.com/forums/gallery/pic.php?mode=large&pic_id=63934

Word Count: 3025

[Kelski]

.

Kelski took the ring back to the buffing wheel, re-polished where she’d heated it and the flame had dulled the polish, and began those steps again. Then she returned it to her main workbench, examined the tray of solitaires, and looked over the piece. She put on her magnification glasses, and began to work on the frog once more.

Flush settings, sometimes called rubbed or Svefra settings, was a minimalistic design that resulted in a sleek piece of jewelry. Setting stones in flush were simple, quick, and economical so it could make a piece overall cheaper. Plus, it was easier to clean and would snag less on outside forces like fabric because one could run their fingers over the gold and if the flush setting was properly seated, the stone would be untouched. However, flush settings took precise crafting of seats. If the seat was cut too deep, to wide, too low or any number of screw ups, it wouldn’t simply work and often times ruined the piece. She also couldn’t use them on soft gems because the stone needed some pressure to be set. Sapphires, diamonds, and rubies took well to it. If she were careful, she could use emeralds and peridots, but it would take all her skill as a Master. Too much pressure in doing flush settings could snap a gemstone, and then she might not easily get it out…

These types of settings didn’t rely on prongs or adhesive to hold them in. That was one of the reasons they were considered advanced techniques. It was an ideal situation for making a spray of color over a piece of jewelry like Kelski was planning.

They needed to be done with strong round stones, not oval square, or anything with sharp corners that would snap under the pressure. The basic concept was to drop the stone into a tight hole in the metal and have it ‘snap’ into place in a small internal channel that was cut with a bud bur on her drill press. Brilliant cut solitaires were required with very thin to medium girdles which made it easier to ‘snap’ them into the narrow space. Pavilions were kept to a minimum since no light needed to be reflected through the stone and the flush setting needed to be as shallow as possible with still covering over the stone.

Kelski put the ring in her portable vice, got out her bur drills, and set them up on her press. She whirled the press with her foot pedal and began the tedious process of opening up the hole sand tapering them on the inside. It was an exact mechanical science – the drilling of metal to an exact diameter – and she was careful, stopping often to check with calipers that her measurements weren’t off.

Once all the holes were burred out, Kelski took the ring back to the bench, polished up all the holes by hand, and then began fittings tones over the holes and gently ‘tapping’ them into the burred space with a pop that locked the stone into place. They were easy in, but the metal would have to be melted to get them out since it was the body of the ring acting as a setting and not an actual physical setting like a system of prongs. She added no adhesives. No Master Jeweler worth her weight would have. Instead, she popped little stones in a very specific order into their flush settings and was proud when she finished that not a single one chipped and broke.

Each body part, from the legs to the stomach, to the eyes had a raised line of gold that distinguished the creature and made it more polished than one might otherwise have come out. It had a Master's touch to it, and Kelski loved the frog when it was done, revising her opinion of the guild man's wife's obsession.

When that was done, she polished again, then set the diamonds in the Frog’s eyes, then soldered on the four-prong mount for the pear-shaped peridot for the frogs back. A final polish and the ring were done. She balanced it up on the bench to make sure it would stand on its own. It did. And indeed, she was very pleased at it, so she sat at her sketchbook and sketched the design completed so she’d have a record.

Her final act was to put a maker’s mark on the bottom of one of the back feet. Her symbol was a tiny stylized feather. Then she boxed the frog, and plucked the real one in its jar off the bench and immediately went to return it to its marsh with extreme gratitude for its time.

Word Count: 3025

[Kelski]

G R A D E S

Kelski -

Drawing +2, Business +2, Carving +2, Hunting +1, Metalworking +3, Bodybuilding + 1