Gershon Baruch is the owner of GB Custom Jewelry in Ramat Gan, Israel.
W hat I Do
I design jewelry — clients tell me what they have in mind and I help them define it. I put it down on paper — well screen — and then create the piece.
How That Works
I usually get an idea of what design the person wants from pictures of existing jewelry. They’ll show me what they like and what they want to modify pointing out how or where the stones are set — “Add a row of diamonds around the center diamond” or “Put my name and my kallah’s below the center diamonds of the engagement ring.” Other times like when I’m working for a company a sketch artist will give me a sketch four views of a design and I convert that to a file that can be made into a 3-D piece of jewelry. Because the design process is virtual I have the ability to work with customers wherever they are all over Israel and the US and beyond.
The Process
Once I have a design of what the client wants the piece to look like I build the design in CAD — that’s computer-aided design the same technology used in engineering of pretty much everything from architecture to shoes to cars boats and rocket ships. I send a highly realistic image to the customer and he’ll tell me if he wants to modify something or he’ll give me the green light. Then I send the file to a 3-D printer CAM — that’s computer-aided manufacturing — which prints the piece in high-resolution wax. Say it’s an engagement ring so the casting house next door casts the wax to gold — they put it in a cup with plaster all around it with a tube leading from the wax to outside the cup. The plaster hardens and the wax is melted out so you’re left with a shape in the plaster where the ring was. The gold is poured through the channel into the empty space and once that sets I take the gold piece out my jeweler polishes it and a stone-setter sets the diamonds.
Most Common Question
How fast can the piece be made? And how much will it cost?
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