I was a sales associate for a large jewelry retailer and we dealt with sending out repairs on a regular basis. Your videos have really educated me on how involved and specialized your craft is! I have a whole new appreciation!
@@strawberryme08 Everytime you polish or repair a ring, you take some of the metal off. Metal doesn't thins over time. It just had a lot of work done on it through the years.
@@strawberryme08 we wear away metal on our rings every day we wear them. The metal rubs on all kinds of surfaces and rings next to it and over the years its no surprise that things wear. Gold and silver aren't as hard as you think they are.
With the whack of new followers you just got, and our million questions, you might want to do a Q&A video! Or, I guess more accurately what I`m saying is, I would like it if you did a Q&A video! ❔💍⛓💎❔
This is the first video of yours I have seen, so I am wondering if that is 14K gold? Or is this a vintage costume jewelry? I any event, do you use rhodium plating for both gold and costume jewelry? Sorry if this is a dumb question.
a question if you don't mind answering, at what point do you remove the stone or stones when doing this type of repair does it come down to the type of stone or the type of heat your using eg, propane or oxy i understand that this would differ from gold and silver
Yea it depends on the stone and the heat source. I personally would never solder anything other than diamonds like this, because most stones could break, change colours or even melt when theyre heated. If thats a sapphire, then I wonder how the stone looked at the end, because corundum will melt when heated with flux. The heat source determines if you can heat up a s all area really quickly or if you have to heat up a bigger area for a longer time, since most metals will distribute most the heat
Yeah, the specific reason I watched this was to see how he handled heating up a ring with a stone. I am really dubious that you could get away with doing it this way without potentially damaging the stone and/or the mounting which is thin and likely to be soldered on.
That usually requires more works and result usually will not turn out as good as taking the whole shank off and replace the new one. Cutting both ends and solder a new shank on just two small spots need to take care. Solder a thin strip metal along the old shank, the strip needs to follow the curve of the old shank which is very troublesome. After you curve the strip perfctly, you need to make sure the strip will stay on the old shank nicely. Through all this, you can start solder the strip on to the shank, but you need to make sure you apply even heat on the whole shank so the solder flow flawlessly. If the solder does not flow smoothly then you will see a lot of small holes where you soldered. Hope this explanation answers you question.
This is soooooooo relaxing, and because you use the dremel and the files and have pink bubbling water for some reason that I don't even need to understand, I feel like I'm getting a free mani-pedi!!!!!!! And I don't even have to get COVID AND be talked about in another language to get it either, now THAT'S PRICELESS!!!! Now THIS is ASMR for 2021!!!! (NO offense intended towards anyone, but that is the risk we take going anywhere at this point in time, and the being talked about has happened to me for years and we all know it happens so don't make me a bad guy people).
I need to repair a shank on a pearl ring (think it’s split where a resize had occurred in the past) . Can you advise if any special steps need to be taken to protect the pearls please?
Muffadal Kothari hello! That was just a coating of boric acid and alcohol to prevent fire scale, it wasn’t used to protect the stone. The synthetic ruby holds up to heat pretty well, especially when it’s not a direct flame. Thank you
You normally know what stone type it is and due to this, if it can stand the heat or not. This might be a ruby so it can handle it. If you're not quite sure you can put a coat of cool paste around or solder it with the ring head in water or wet sand.
@@chrissidae374 Interesting. there is no way it’s a natural Ruby with a hole drilled through it like a black onyx. That’s why I was curious. I did buy some of the Good earth acid for rhodium plating. It really does a nice job.
I was very proud of myself that i was able to look at the thumbnail and figure out what you did. You did a good job I just happened to put together how you did it.
You don't have to remove stone prior to soldering? I had taken my ring in to a goldsmith to fix shank that was bent after falling off my finger onto driveway. I drove over it and it was bent. The stone was a garnet (birthstone)I had for almost 30 years. . Apparently, he said while soldering, the stone cracked ☹. He had some old garnets laying around and replaced it.
@@jlo1423 Yes, I am aware that a a diamond can take heat, but this heat can also loosen precious metal holding it in place...however, this wasn't a diamond but a soft stone.
Is making jewelery a hobby or a profession? You skill says professional. If it's your profession, what would you recommend an experienced hobbiest silversmith to do to become a professional?
Aaron S. It is my profession! Honestly just learning more techniques and doing more work! Once you have all of the basics down you can start to make a living off of it.
as a person who has nothing to do with making or repairing rings and am just watching for the end result, I would hope to see the ring from the top and perhaps how much this service costs :D
The stones aren't electrically conductive so the rhodium doesn't plate onto them. The heat could have done some damage if the stones were hear sensitive, idk how you tell when that will or won't be a problem
I have a two band yellow and white gold ring, whose bands have separated slightly. Could they be glued back in place? If so, what glue would you recommend?
@@jlo1423 I'm sorry, but if you go back a few comments you'll see he answered some questions, problem is the videos continue getting views and he keeps posting more. How could he possibly reply to every single comment in every single vid he posted? Try it yourself and tell me how long it takes you.
Dustin Mercer depends on what we decide! I can either return it, or recycle it (which gives a discount on the overall cost) or throw it into the melt when making a new shank.
@@moderngoldsmith Thank you, sir. My ring is be re-shanked as we speak. And we never discussed the gold that he is removing; what he will do with it. I wonder how to approach this when I pick up the ring (and ask for the gold back, etc.?) I'm assuming he thinks he will keep the gold . . . maybe this is standard? But at today's prices, he's hardly keeping worthless "scrap."
I would call now to discuss it before you pick up. Sometimes the gold scraps can be thrown in a pile making retrieving them later *annoying* to the jeweler. Some places will say that the old shank is included in the price and will want to charge you more. It’s all kind of silly. After doing hundreds of shanks over the years I’ve found the best practice is to just have that conversation at the start with the client, to avoid any awkwardness later! At the end of the day, you’re the customer and they should give it back to you if they care about good service. Good luck!
@@moderngoldsmith Thanks again! I called. Left a message. And I will use this information, when, I bet you anything, they say they were planning to keep the scrap, and this becomes an unnecessary issue. Really appreciate it.
The jeweler, William Penn Jewelers, just flat out lied to me. I offered them some gold to use to fix the ring. They said "No, we can't use any gold you might supply for the shank. We cut off the old gold and use a brand new shank! Sir, YOU JUST DON'T UNDERSTAND HOW THIS IS DONE, DO YOU?" Then when I picked up the ring and asked, "OK, so where's the gold you cut off from my ring?" William Penn Jewelers said, "Oh, we used that old gold for the new shank! I'm sorry, did I forget to tell you we're bold-faced liars!?!? We are! Thank you!"
He mentioned in a comment that this was a synthetic ruby. They are very hest-resistant. I've made a pendant using silver clay with a synthetic ruby embedded into it before firing, and it turned out fine.
Repair for a bent ring is different though, look at some of his other videos! There is a video where a ring was completely flattened and he repaired it without cutting!
PLATTUNG IS AWSOME but i my self hate when people do it. for the fact if you take it to a place that buys silver they will most of the time do a simple scratch test at first then tell you its to hard to test and tell the person we have to cut into it to make sure its silver and most times the person will not want that so the ring will get tosin a drower and no one gets to see it or the person will let them damage the ring making it not elagble for resale. and my business is in resale so when I have to cut a ring I have to look at is it worth repairing or tossing do to low value wear if uncoated its simply just clean it up no damage made. yes sometimes I can just get threw the planting if its thin with no damage that I cant buff out but sometimes things are heavy platted. either way looks great my friend.
This is prolly dumb, but I didn't know chlorine ruined silver, so I went swimming for hours but the place was noticeably too chlorinated. So, I noticed later that the ring I've been wearing for over five years from my big bro got thinner and panicked. I feel like an idiot, I really didn't know. Is it fixable? Is it possible to put coatings on it to thicken it? I have this paranoid belief that if I take it off, my older brother will die, but I'm more scared of it slowly dissolving away and dissappearing now, new insecurity unlocked and all that. And I really just wanna keep the ring that's left without breaking anything. I'm just really sad.
Why would you rhodium plate a gold or a silver ring I used to do thousands of ring sizes and soldering chains back in the 80s we always like the color of our metal that's why we chose it I understand rhodium is hard still wrong
You would think they could have just reshaped the ring on the ring sizer with a soft mallet . This is not accessable by just anyone and all your saying is " send it to a jeweller "
