AT2: Brasenose's BC begun

As I hoped, I began work on Brasenose's breastcollar on my birthday.  It is going quickly and well.  Lessons learned with AT1 (Akhal Teke Presentation Set No. 1) are definitely coming in useful.  Something desired for a year is finally coming together!
     Let's begin with this shot, which shows just about everything.  Here is the garment leather base, cut large enough so I don't have to add a strip!  The glass dishes hold the various cut and prepared ikandis (hot fix iron-ons).  The doming (dapping) blocks, one metal one plastic, are in the left background.  My sole dapping stick is middle left (it turns out to be a 3/16").  Even the jewels, mostly emeralds with some sapphires, are visible in the middle of this shot.  I plan to have the central bc jewel be one particularly green sapphire; truth is, I haven't got an emerald big enough for it.

The pine wood block is my stamping block.  Not only were all the metal strips formed there, using the chisel (seen resting across it, above right); the square gold plates were domed there too.  When the tiny bezel strips are set in to those gold plates (below), I position them on the round bolthead on the stamping block, so as not to lose the plates' shape.
You can see that very bolthead in the upper right of this shot.  It's the largest, flattest-looking, shiniest one on the block.

I'm cutting the bezel strips from larger 13mm rounds.  Those gold rounds were also visible in photo 2.  They are resting just behind my Rio Rondo sheet of Akhal Teke leaves in gold.  Amazingly just one round supplied the whole breastcollar.

I watch/listened to Howl's Moving Castle while I made this.
This next shot shows the tiny bezel strips, waiting to receive the jewels.  The strips have to be cut and shaped individually by hand.  This is some of the hardest work:  getting them small enough to fit down into the holes.  I alternately trim the holes wider with a chisel and cut down the bezels. If you thought I was pro enough to get them small enough before gluing,... well,... think again.

Work remains.  I need to make a buckle and install it, and finish the offside end.  Setting all the jewels, hanging all the leaves, and painting the edges with Edge Cote will be the last steps.

And Brasenose will at last be properly attired.