Probably in the neighborhood of 4 hours total. Bezels take a while in general and especially for me, you have to get them to fit the stone just right, then solder them closed and then solder them down, then file them to be the right height for the stone. And, because I’m using brass wire that wasn’t really meant to be used for bezels, it’s pretty thick, so I have to thin it at the top so I can close it around the stone easier. For me in particular it usually takes me a couple tries to get each of the solder steps right, so with three of them on this one it took me a while hahaha. When you heat it up during soldering, the surface oxidizes, which you have to clean off with an acid bath before you can solder it again, so there’s a bit of a waiting period, like 5-10 minutes between soldering steps that I’m not adding into the total time because work on other stuff during that

I think the biggest barrier to entry is probably soldering things(slash getting and using a torch in general), but you can make beautiful things without one! You can use rivets and wire wrapping to attach pieces together mechnically and use wire wrapping to mount stones! A torch is still very helpful for annealing metal to make it softer (because it hardens as you work it) but you could probably use a small butane torch or maybe even a lighter for that. I’d say all you really need is a rivet hammer (for rivets and texturing), a small steel plate and a vice (I’d also recommend a bench pin but you could make one yourself easy enough) to hammer against and hold pieces, a jewellers saw (it’s like a coping saw but you can adjust the tension), a file, a couple good pairs of pliers, and a drill. I’d recommend a small drill press but a hand drill can work fine. Which, now that I say it seems like a lot of stuff to get started, but it doesn’t include any really expensive items, you know? The drill is the only power tool and you probably already have one if you’re a maker kinda person. Copper and brass are pretty cheap, I order my stuff from rio grande and I like working with it cause if I screw up I don’t have to worry about wasted material costs hahaha.

This is something I made without soldering!

Not at all, good use of negative space and substraction are a thing in design.

I think I’d make it a bit smaller and square instead of rectangular. I think I’d make the ends of the square wire meet in the middle of of an edge instead of on a corner, and put the wire on top of the sheet instead of below it. I’d also like to make the loop out of the same piece of wire, instead of a seperate one soldered on!

Hahaha it’s the place with the best lighting for pictures

The drop is labradorite and the round stones are kyanite!

This design isn’t based off anything in particular! I’d originally wanted to do a drop of water falling into rippling brass wire, but couldn’t find a way to incorporate the kyanites in a way that didn’t look silly to me. So, I went back to the drawing board and figured out how I wanted the stones arranged and then sketched designs out from that. It gives me playing card vibes, completely unintentionally haha