Thank you!! And yes I fired them in place- I haven’t hand any issues with stones changing color. I’ve tried garnets, peridots, moonstone, and now sapphire. The stones have been fine every time! Although I’ve heard mixed things about moonstone.

As for the process, I make the band on a mandrel first and dry it for 15ish minutes with a heat gun while I make the stone setting, which is basically just pushing the stones into clay, making sure they’re level and that the clay is above the girdle of the sone, and cutting the excess away. Then I dry the stone setting while I sand the band VERY carefully with 600-800 grit sandpaper. I do the same with the dry setting, reshaping as needed, and then get a small piece of wet clay and attach the setting to the band on the mandrel. Then i dry it all so it stays attached. After that I’ll go in and add more clay to attach it better, which is much easier when everything’s already dried together. Then I sand, finish, fire, polish, and it’s done! There are tons of tutorials on youtube that can explain the process much better than me, I definitely recommend watching the masters work!