Have you ever wished you had a way to quickly and affordably set stones over and over again in order to master a specific stone-setting skill? The skills and craftsmanship of jewelry making requires this type of learning by repeatedly doing.

TrendSetter Wheel for prong setting
Blaine Lewis, founder and president of the New Approach School for Jewelers, understands this. He spends his days teaching advanced stone setting among other essential skills for jewelers. In response to the need for repetition, Blaine invented TrendSetter Wheels to help students master popular stone-setting techniques.
Below is a video of Blaine demonstrating his innovative TrendSetter Wheels. These ingenious wheels are available at Rio Grande in multiple versions—wheels for practicing channel, bead, bezel, prong, pavé, and flush setting in different shapes, as well. Each wheel comes with CZs for practicing.
Stone setting is hard work. To succeed, it takes precision and patience. My first jewelry-making class was a basic stone stone-setting class. I found it to be therapeutic because it forced me to slow down and focus. For more on patience and precision, check out this video we posted on Rio’s Blog a couple weeks ago, also featuring Blaine Lewis: Precision Bur Control While Setting Gemstones.
With precision, patience, and plenty of practice, you’ll be able to stone-set with your eyes closed. Well, that might be a slight exaggeration—but hey—I think maybe I’m onto something for our next contest…
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