Building a Simple Cage Around a Cabochon
Okay. Last time was about picking a stone, and I know some of you have been sitting on a rock for a week now, deciding if it's the one. That's fine. That's actually part of the process, I think, sitting with a stone before you commit wire to it.
Today we cage it.
A cage is just wire wrapped around the stone in a way that holds it without gluing it, soldering it, or drilling a hole in it. No-solder, like everything in this class. The wire itself does all the work, which means if you get the tension wrong the stone falls out, and if you get it right the stone isn't going anywhere for years. That's the whole trick of it.
What you need
- Your cabochon (flat-backed stone, the kind we talked about last lesson)
- 20 or 22 gauge wire, copper, and I mean that, copper, we are not touching silver for this
- Round-nose pliers
- Flush cutters
- A ruler, because I want you measuring this time, not eyeballing it
If you're using a stone with any kind of edge on it, a rougher piece you found rather than a polished cab, keep an eye on your fingers as you work the wire around it. Wire ends are sharp right after you cut them too, so don't run your thumb along a fresh cut to "check" it. I've done that. It's a small cut but it's a dumb one to get.
The steps, in the order your hands actually do them
I want to explain something here for a second, because it matters more than people think. When I write instructions, for work I mean, not this, I write the steps in the order your hands move, not the order the ideas came to me in. A lot of tutorials fail because someone explains the whole plan first and then the steps, and by step three you've forgotten why you're doing it. So I'm going to just walk your hands through this.
1. Measure your stone. Length and width, write it down. You'll need roughly three to four times the stone's length in wire for each of your main framing wires, so if your stone is an inch and a half, cut wire around five to six inches long. Cut two of these to start.
2. Cross the two wires under the stone, like a plus sign, with the stone sitting where the wires meet. The stone's back sits right at that intersection. This feels awkward for about thirty seconds and then it clicks.
3. Bring each wire up and over the stone's edge, snug against the sides, not just resting there. You're forming the first ribs of the cage. Snug matters more than pretty here. If it's loose now it will be loose forever, wire doesn't tighten itself later, I wish it did.
4. Where the wires cross again on top, wrap one around the other two or three times to lock it, the same wrapped-loop tension we've been practicing this whole course. This is the moment the cage becomes a cage instead of just wire draped over a rock.
5. Take your remaining wire tails and bring them up over the top in the other direction, crossing the first set, so you end up with a basic four-point or six-point cage depending on how ambitious you're feeling. Wrap those tails down too.
6. Bend the top tails into a loop for your bail (that's the loop your chain goes through), using the wrapped loop technique from a few lessons back.
7. Trim your ends flush and tuck anything sharp down against the frame, not sticking out where it'll catch on a sweater or, worse, someone's finger.
That's a cage. It won't look like a jewelry store cage the first time. That's fine.
A thing I've stopped fighting
I have to say something here that's a little bit contrarian, and I'm not going to push it on anyone. When people make two of anything, earrings, a set, whatever, they want them to match exactly. I don't love matched sets. I think two pieces that are close but not identical look like a person made them, which they did. Nobody's hands make the same wrap twice, and I've made peace with that being the point instead of the flaw.
I think about this because a while back my friend Alice talked me into making matching bracelets for a girls' trip, one for each of us. I stayed up too late the night before we left finishing them and I got the sizing slightly off between the two, close but not identical, one sat a little looser than the other. I noticed it the second everyone put them on. Nobody else said a word. Everyone just wore them the whole trip, and looking back I don't think anyone but me was ever going to notice or care. I think about that a lot when I'm agonizing over whether two pieces of anything match.
So if your cage looks a little different than your neighbor's cage, or your second attempt looks different than your first, I'd actually count that as a good sign and not a problem.
If the stone won't sit still
If your stone keeps sliding around while you're working the wires up its sides, that almost always means your crossing point at the back was too loose to start. Undo it, snug it up, try again. This is the part where people want to quit and force it anyway, and forcing it just means the stone falls out three weeks later at church or on a hike. Better to redo the crossing now.
Before next time
Bring the stone you actually want to keep, not a practice rock, we're doing this for real next lesson and building on today's cage with some decorative wraps around the front. If your cage from today came out wobbly, bring that too. Wobbly is a fine place to start from.