Onyx pod earrings are done now. The naked stones had been sitting at my computer desk, staring at me for some time. It is nice to have an actual socket to poke them into. The earrings turned out very close to what I had initially imagined. I had originally intended for the upper part to have a larger loop, but became concerned about structural problems and the ever-present weight issue with earrings. I estimated they would be just over 3 grams when finished, they came in under that at 2.6 grams, which is better than expected.
I was also concerned about being able to clean up the sprue connection. (That is the stick of metal attached to the earring once it has been cast.) The sprue was connected on the left side where the earring begins to loop. Using a couple of specialized hammer setting attachments, I was able to duplicate the texture of the metal enough so it does not look like a patch job.
The onyx bullets taper from the very top, so the silver setting has a grip on the stone. This satisfied my 'never rely on glue to hold a stone in place' policy.
