The stone stays where we put it
A stone that comes loose after your customer has worn the piece for a month is not a small problem. It costs you the return, it costs you the repair, and it costs you the thing that is hardest to win back — the quiet confidence that person had in your name. Most setting failures are decided long before anyone picks up a tool: a seat cut to a nominal size instead of the stone in front of the bench, a prong left too thin to survive the first knock, a torch used next to a stone that cannot take heat. We work the other way round.
The problem this solves
What a setting failure actually costs you
The visible cost is small: one stone, one return, one repair. The real cost is what happens afterwards. Your customer stops trusting the piece, and a piece that is not trusted is not worn, and a piece that is not worn is not recommended. You absorb the return because arguing with a customer about a stone that fell out is a losing position. Your team spends time on a repair instead of on new work. And if it happens across a run rather than on one unit, you now have a decision to make about stock you have already paid for and may not be able to sell.
Pavé is where this shows up most often, because pavé is judged in photographs and photographs are generous. A field can look perfectly even in a product shot and be visibly uneven in the hand: spacing that drifts across the row, stones sitting at different heights, a bead that is slightly proud on one side and slightly sunken on the other. Your customer does not need to know anything about jewellery to notice that. They just know it looks cheaper than the price they paid, and they attribute that to you rather than to whoever cut the seats.
Then there are the failures nobody tells you about. A prong left too thin does not fail on the bench; it fails the first time the piece catches on a sleeve, and the crack is discovered by your customer. A stone chipped during setting can be quietly swapped for another one, or held in with adhesive, and the piece leaves looking finished — which means the problem is no longer a known repair, it is a ticking one. And heat-sensitive stones — emerald, opal, pearl, treated material — get damaged by a torch used near them, with the damage sometimes not showing until later. Every one of those is avoidable, and every one of them lands on you, not on the bench that caused it.
If a stone is damaged on our bench, you hear it from us. Not from your customer, and not from a piece that comes back in six weeks.
What we do instead
Four decisions that keep stones in
Every seat is cut to the stone in front of us
A seat cut to a nominal size fits most stones and fails the ones that are not average, which is exactly why stones come loose. We measure the actual stone and cut the seat to it, so the girdle sits on metal rather than hovering over a gap. For you that means the stone has something under it and around it from the first day, rather than being held by friction that will relax the first time the piece is knocked or resized.
We leave enough metal to do the holding
A prong that looks delicate in a photograph and is too thin in metal will crack at first wear, and a pavé field cut too close to the edge leaves no wall behind the stones to work against. We build in the thickness the job needs — enough metal at the prong, a proper bearing cut for the girdle, real metal behind the row — and we tell you when a design asks for less than we are willing to stand behind. What that buys you is a piece that survives being worn, which is the only test that matters.
Your stones are counted and checked before a seat is cut
If you supply the stones, we count them, check them against your list and look at them for chips, fractures and treatment issues on arrival — before any metal is committed. Anything questionable is reported to you then, with a photograph and a recommended decision. This is the difference between a problem you manage and a problem that surfaces as a piece half-set on a bench with nobody willing to say whose stone it was or when it broke.
The torch stays away from stones that cannot take heat
Emerald, opal, pearl and many treated stones are damaged by heat, and the damage is not always immediate. Where a piece has to be assembled or repaired with stones already in place, we join it with the laser instead, which puts heat into a tiny, controlled spot rather than soaking the whole piece. It lets us work near material that a torch would ruin, and it means we are not silently accepting a risk that belongs to your stone.
How working with us goes
What happens to your piece, in order
You send the piece, the model or the stones
A finished piece that needs setting, a CAD model with the stone layout already decided, or a sample and a stone list. If the layout is not settled, we will tell you what we would change and why — usually because a seat needs more metal than the drawing leaves room for. You get that answer before anything is cut, not as an explanation afterwards.
Stones are logged and checked on arrival
Everything you send is counted and inspected, and the count is confirmed back to you. Discrepancies get resolved while the stones are still loose in a parcel rather than when half of them are already seated. If a stone arrives damaged, we photograph it and send it back to you with the question rather than quietly making a decision on your behalf.
Seats are cut, stones are set
Seats are cut to the measured stones, and the piece is set with the metal thickness the job needs. Where heat has to be applied near a stone that cannot take it, the join is made with the laser instead of a torch. Work at this stage is done by our own senior setters — a ~10-person team of senior makers, not a rotating bench.
Checked under a loupe before it moves on
Each stone is checked for level, for tightness and for any movement at all before the piece leaves the setting bench. Pavé is checked for even spacing and consistent height across the row, not just stone by stone. This is the inspection that catches the thing a photograph would hide, and it happens before the piece goes to hand finishing, where correcting it would mean re-polishing.
Handover with a record of what was done
You get the piece, the stone count confirmed, and anything we noted along the way — a stone that was already included, a seat that needed more metal than drawn, a design detail we would change on the next run. That record is what makes the next order match this one, and it is yours to keep whether you order again from us or not.
The risks we take off the table
What you are not exposed to
The tenth piece matches the first
Uneven work across a run is the complaint that is hardest to fix after the fact, because by the time you see it you have stock. We set against the same seat geometry and the same layout on every unit, so spacing, height and tightness hold across the run rather than drifting as the bench gets tired. Your customer comparing two pieces side by side sees two pieces that look like the same piece.
Your stones and your design stay yours
Stones you send are logged, counted and accounted for, and the people handling them are the people setting them. Our team is a ~10-person team of senior makers, and your material does not leave the bench it was logged into. If you want the count confirmed at any point during the job, ask and we will send it.
You hear the honest limits before you commit
Some stones carry risk no matter how carefully they are set. Brittle material can fracture under normal setting pressure. Very small melee in soft metal will not hold indefinitely, and no setter can change that. Heat-sensitive stones are at risk whenever heat is involved. We would rather tell you that at the start, and tell you what we would do instead, than agree to the job and let you find out.
If a piece misses the bar
If a stone is damaged on our bench, we tell you, and we put it right — including replacing the stone if that is what the situation calls for. We do not hold a stone in with adhesive to get a piece out of the door, and we do not quietly substitute one and hope the difference goes unnoticed. A fault we report is a problem you can plan around. A fault we hide is one that reaches your customer.
Proof
Look at the work and the inspection
A pavé bangle, close up
A pavé field is where uneven work shows first, so this is the piece to look at. Photographed at magnification rather than styled, so you can judge spacing, height and bead work across the row the way an inspection would.
See the pavé-set gold bangleHow we inspect before handover
The checks a piece goes through before it is allowed to leave the bench: level, tightness, movement, spacing and height, and what we record when something does not pass. This is the page to read if you want to know what evidence exists beyond our word.
Read our inspection processQuality control, end to end
Where setting sits inside the wider quality system, and what is checked at each stage from fabrication through to the piece being packed. Useful if you are comparing us against a workshop that only checks at the end.
See quality controlWhat we need from you to start
Less than you think
- The piece, the model or a sample — an unset piece, a CAD file with the layout, or a physical sample you want matched.
- The stones, or the specification for them — if you are supplying them, send them; if not, tell us type, size, quantity and quality and we will talk about sourcing.
- The setting style you want — prong, bezel, pavé, channel, flush. If you are not sure, say what the piece has to do and we will propose.
- What the piece has to survive — a ring worn daily, an occasional-wear piece, something that will be resized. This decides how much metal we leave.
- How many units — a single piece or a run. The seat geometry is settled once and used across the run.
- Anything you already know is fragile — tell us about emerald, opal, pearl or treated material and we plan the heat around it.
Questions buyers actually ask
QCan you set stones we supply ourselves?
Yes, and most of the work we do is on supplied stones. They are counted and inspected on arrival and the count is confirmed back to you before any seat is cut. That protects both of us: you know the stones arrived intact, and we are not asked later to account for damage that was already there when the parcel was opened.
QWhat about stones that are brittle or heat-sensitive?
We plan around them instead of pretending the risk is not there. Emerald, opal, pearl and treated stones are assembled with the laser rather than a torch, so heat goes into a small controlled spot instead of into the stone. Brittle material still carries some risk even handled carefully, and we tell you that up front rather than after the fact.
QWill very small melee hold?
Small melee in soft metal is the honest weak point of setting, and no bench can make it hold forever. In a harder alloy, with enough metal behind the row and a bead properly raised against each stone, it holds well. We will tell you when a design asks for melee smaller than the metal can reliably grip, and what we would change instead.
QCan you set a piece that was made somewhere else?
Often, but we look at it first. A piece made without the seats in mind may not have the metal left to hold a stone properly, and we will not cut into a piece to make a setting work at the expense of its structure. If it can be done properly we say so; if it cannot, we say that instead, before anything is cut.
QWhat if a stone comes loose after the customer has it?
Send it back and tell us what happened. If the seat is the problem we say so and re-cut it, which is the fix that lasts; re-tightening a bad seat is a temporary repair and we will not pretend otherwise. If the piece was knocked hard enough to bend the metal, we will tell you that plainly as well, because you need the real answer for your customer.
Send us the piece you are worried about
If you have a design with a stone layout you are not confident about, or a piece that has already had a stone come loose, send it. We will tell you what we would change in the seat, how much metal the design actually leaves to work with, and whether any of the stones carry risk we would want you to know about first. That answer costs you an email, and it is a lot cheaper than finding out after the run is delivered.
Brands come to us through our work with jewellery brands and independent makers through our work with designers. Setting rarely sits on its own — it touches manufacturing and prototype development, and we can take the whole path.