00:00I'm Lucy Fink. I'm a video producer at Refinery29, but every so often I like to try other people's jobs.
00:06Today I'm at the Brooklyn Navy Yard visiting Catbird, and I'm going to learn how an engagement ring is made,
00:12and also see if I have what it takes to make my very own bridal jewelry.
00:16This is Lucy for Hire.
00:21I've been engaged for just about a year now, and with my wedding coming up in September,
00:25I've become increasingly interested in bridal jewelry.
00:28Catbird is the maker of those dainty little gold rings that I always wear,
00:32and also of my favorite baby pearl hoop earrings.
00:36And in a world filled with factories, assembly lines, and 3D printers,
00:40it's amazing to see artists that still make their craft by hand.
00:44At Catbird's jewelry studio in Brooklyn, New York, you'll see a buzzing floor flooded with natural light
00:50and filled mostly with young women all hammering, welding, and polishing their way to beautiful handcrafted pieces.
00:58Naturally, the first thing that I took interest in was watching an engagement ring in process from start to finish.
01:04It all begins in their gold room.
01:07On this day, the jeweler was making Catbird's Violette the Swan Ring.
01:11The stones, which are recycled, brilliant cut white diamonds, are pulled from inventory,
01:16and then the gold wire for the shank, which is 100% recycled, is formed on the mandrel and measured
01:22to be the perfect ring size.
01:24Then in comes the casting, which is basically the head of the ring where the diamonds will sit.
01:29The jeweler then measures the width of the casting so that she knows how much space to leave in the
01:34shank,
01:34and then marks the shank and snips it accordingly.
01:37The two pieces are then ready to be welded in the laser welder.
01:42The jeweler carefully welds the two pieces together and then the ring is prepared for stone setting.
01:47A handheld rotary tool called a flex shaft is used to cut the seat for the stones to sit flat
01:53in the setting.
01:58The prongs are first pulled over the stone with pliers and then tapped over the stone with the hammer handpiece
02:03to keep the stone secure.
02:05Throughout this process, I learned that if a stone isn't set straight,
02:09it won't reflect the light to the best of its ability and it wouldn't do the stone justice.
02:13So Catbird's Jewelers work intently to make sure every aspect of the piece is perfect.
02:18After the prongs are shaped and the stones are all set, the ring is polished, finished, cleaned up, and sent
02:25through for quality assurance testing.
02:27And after that, some lucky human gets to walk around for the rest of their life with this beautiful handcrafted
02:33ring.
02:34Okay, that's my hand. I was just trying it on.
02:38Watching this entire process got me so inspired that I knew that I wanted to try making a piece of
02:43my own.
02:43Of course, I already have an engagement ring and also a wedding band picked out for my left hand,
02:49but I thought it would be incredibly special to make a ring that I'd wear on my right hand on
02:53my wedding day.
02:54So I partnered up with Sasha, a jeweler at Catbird, who worked alongside me and taught me to make their
02:59Snow Queen ring.
03:01I came into this industry mostly by choice, but both of my parents are in the industry, so it kind
03:07of just happened naturally.
03:08I personally didn't go to trade school, but I did have somewhat of an at-home trade school experience through
03:15my parents.
03:15My mom ran her business upstairs in our home, and we had a bench in my house growing up,
03:20so I kind of had my own trade school experience there.
03:24I think Lucy's going to struggle a little, specifically with stone setting.
03:27I think cutting the seat for the stone and also just having that level of control with your hands is
03:31really important.
03:32Just trying not to, like, nick yourself or laser weld your finger.
03:36But yeah, other than that, it's going to be a really fun experience, and I also heard that she'll be
03:39wearing the ring on her wedding day,
03:41which is really special, and it's definitely a fun process.
03:44Your first challenge is prepping in the gold room.
03:47Before starting any piece of jewelry, you have to go into their gold room for your raw materials.
03:53Catbird uses recycled gold, and all of the brilliant cut diamonds in the Catbird collection are recycled,
03:58meaning they're reclaimed from vintage and dead stock jewelry, so there's no mining involved or any environmental impact.
04:05The Snow Queen ring has a nice mix of recycled brilliant cut white diamonds and ethically sourced rose cut white
04:10diamonds.
04:11The shank of the Snow Queen ring was pre-cut in inventory, so we gathered the shank and casting we
04:16needed,
04:17and then sorted through the diamonds to pull the right sizes for this ring.
04:20We have all these diamonds here. What do I do with these?
04:23So there's the 1.7mm brilliant, and we need two of those.
04:27Two of those.
04:28And then we need four 2mm rose cuts.
04:31You have to be really good with your hands to work here.
04:34For the center stone, we need one 3mm rose cut.
04:38Once I dropped my diamonds into a baggie and had my shank and casting ready, it was off to my
04:43second challenge.
04:44Got it! In my bag!
04:46Alright, to the bench?
04:48To the bench.
04:50Your second challenge is the initial assembly.
04:52Now it was time for me to stick my hands in the laser welding machine and weld the two pieces
04:57together.
04:58Nice!
04:59This part was difficult.
05:01So I should walk out of here with fingers.
05:04With both hands.
05:05Yeah.
05:05We first added some black marker to the area of both pieces that we wanted fused together,
05:10since adding darker color better attracts the laser.
05:13Then you have to look through the microscope, which makes this tiny ring look huge.
05:18Line up the region that you want to target on the little X, and then step on a foot pedal
05:22to fire the laser.
05:24Sasha demonstrated how to do it first, and she even showed me how hot the ring gets in there.
05:29Oh my gosh!
05:31It burns!
05:32Then she let me have a try.
05:34This is not as easy as it looks.
05:35The toughest part for me was keeping my hands perfectly still and not moving my upper body at all while
05:42I stepped on the foot pedal.
05:43For some reason I only see my own eyes.
05:46I definitely missed a few times and accidentally fired the laser straight through to the floor of the machine.
05:51Oh, I think I hit the wrong spot.
05:57I am lasering this ring.
06:01Woo!
06:01Ha ha!
06:02My ring looks beautiful in this stage.
06:05Alright, now it's done.
06:07My third challenge was stone setting.
06:09Unlike the engagement ring, which had one large diamond and then two smaller diamonds, the Snow Queen ring has seven
06:16small diamonds.
06:17So setting these stones is very precarious.
06:21I began by opening up the prongs with pliers ever so slightly to make room for the diamonds,
06:26and then used the flex shaft and setting burr to cut seats for the stones.
06:30You then use a sticky piece of wax to pick up the diamonds and place them into the seat.
06:35It's important to place them with the right side up and also not to drop them, which I accidentally did.
06:41They're tiny, so you have to have a really good eye when it comes to finding them.
06:46And thankfully, Sasha does, so she found the stone that I dropped.
06:49Once a diamond was straight and in place, she taught me how to tighten the prongs,
06:54use the hammer handpiece to gently bend the prongs over the stone,
06:57and then shaped the prongs using the flex shaft with rubber abrasive wheels
07:01in order to give the prongs their signature catbird claw look.
07:05After setting the stones, it was time for my final challenge, polishing and finishing.
07:11We continued to shape and smooth the prongs with several different types of abrasive rubber wheels,
07:16one abrasive called a knife edge to sharpen and shape the prongs,
07:19and one light abrasive to take down the height of the prongs and to smooth them out
07:24before we gave the entire ring a high polish on the giant polishing wheel.
07:29Once it was polished, we dropped it into an ultrasonic bath.
07:33This bath emits high-frequency sound waves.
07:36So when you place the jewelry into this cleaning solution,
07:38the bubbles created by the disturbance in the water remove the dirt and contamination on the pieces.
07:44I even put my own engagement ring into this ultrasonic bath just to give it some extra polish.
07:51It's a different ring!
07:52And finally, we steamed the ring until it was shiny and perfect.
07:56And after only a couple of hours, I had a beautiful, finished Snow Queen ring ready to go for my
08:01wedding day.
08:02There's something so special about handcrafted jewelry and watching all of the love that goes into each and every piece,
08:08and I can't believe that I got to make a piece of jewelry that I'm going to wear on my
08:12wedding day.
08:13Seeing this studio in action is incredible.
08:16So many talented women at work in such a fun environment.
08:19Thanks for tuning in and let us know what jobs you want to see me try next time on Lucy
08:23for Hire.
08:26Hey YouTube, thanks for watching.
08:28Comment below and let us know what other episodes of Lucy for Hire you want to see.
08:32Click right here to watch another video in this series,
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08:38and right here for my personal YouTube channel.
08:41See ya!
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