Mountings.
I would have to say that this turned out to be the most challenging aspect of the project.
I assumed (ahem) that all one would have to do would be to open a standard jewelry makers catalog for mountings of all kinds.
One would simply turn to the page for the kind of mounting one wanted, like silver round 4 prong chainable, go down the list for the size needed, and order.
Wrong.
No such catalog listings exist (that I found).
Some suppliers have partial size lists in some select shapes. Others have a 'few' standard mountings of odd sizes. Thus began the search for mountings.
I would find a few of the sizes I needed in one place, a few in another, one here, one there, and some not at all. To add to the problem, some suppliers wanted $50 or more 'per mounting'. At 100 stones that's $5K (!) just for mountings. And, these were just simple single stone mountings with no provision for chaining them together.
The mountings I needed were not available. Could I make them ?