My ring doesn't fit anymore!

 "My ring doesn't fit anymore. Can you help me?" Well its funny you asked, because I was just in the process of writing a blog about that very subject! After sizing thousands of rings over the course of 40 plus years I've developed a method. Here it is.


First the rings are inspected for loose stones and any worn prongs. Certain stones such as emeralds, pearls, tanzanite, opal, and generally anything green can't take the heat required to size a ring. They have to be removed or protected first. Diamonds can take great heat but have to be cleaned thoroughly to remove soap and other grunge or it can get baked on the back of them in the next process.. Here I am cleaning diamonds with a steam cleaner.
In the next process I heat the shank or bottom of the ring. This will reveal any previous sizing seams. I usually remove the old section of sizing stock and replace it with one larger one, to prevent the ring from having more than one set of seams, which would weaken it. This is a perfect example of a sizing seam.

 The ring below had never been sized before, but it did have sizing balls in it which I removed for good. The idea is that they will take up space after the ring passes over the knuckle and keep the ring from turning on the finger. In my opinion they don't seem to work well. Its kind of like having a stone in your shoe. You always know its there and you can't wait to get it out.

Here you can see that I've split the rings at the bottom and am preparing a peice of gold stock which I will fit and then gold weld into the space.The long metal tube is called a ring mandrel. It increases in thickness from one end to the other. Each line is a quarter of a size. That's how I know how much bigger to make the ring. I seperated the wedding band from the engaement ring and sized them seperately. Later I'll weld them back together. 
This tool is called a Rolling Mill. Its one of the first tools I spent a lot of money on, and one that I've used the most. It was worth the money. It is 30 years old and still going strong. I melt gold into a blob (or billet) and then use the roller to flatten and form it. Yellow gold is very malleable, it can be rolled like dough underneath a rolling pin. I then file the peice to the right dimension.
Here are the rings with the gold sizing stock gold welded into them. After this process a lot of filing and shaping goes into the project. And then the polishing....
And the finished rings! Looking as good as the day they were bought. And they fit again!

 Thanks for looking! Cheers and Happy New Years!
David Inlow















Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Hybrids

Image
 Making jewelry is a very labor intensive process. You have to be passionate about your craft or you'll get caught up in the time vs. money conundrum. I've been there, and so had my Dad, I'm certain, from time to time. Projects like this diamond pendant enhancer set with baguettes eat time. My Dad realized the survival of his jewelry business depended on the new technology of Cad-Cam, or Computer aided Designing-Computer aided Manufacturing. In 2007, with the help of my brother Steve, we managed to get a computer program for jewelry design. By then my Dad was in his mid-seventies, and had little desire to learn a complicated computer program.  I never had much interest in the computer, but I did have an interest in keeping my job. So I learned the program quickly, and learned a lot about the computer in general. Our first jewelry projects were learning experiences, but I could see the potential. So could my Dad We began incorporating parts of cad-cam with traditional method...
Read more

Bench Works

Image
 I decided to ring in 2024 with a few blog posts describing the techniques I use to create and repair jewelry (and other things). As I look out at the landscape I see fewer and fewer craftspeople that acually use the methods my Dad taught me. There are very few schools anymore that train in the jewelry arts. A customer recently asked me to make a ring that would hold his wife's sorority pin safely and securely but  which could be removed and worn as a  pin also. I decided to carve the ring out of a wax blank. The pin's locking mechanism has to be accessible, and working in 3 dimension helped me to visualize and experiment with tolerences. (in other words I was winging it a little) The nice thing about working with wax is that you can add and subtract on the fly. You can't do that as easily with gold or silver.  The above picture shows the wax blank I begin with. The picture below shows the rough wax model sprued and ready for casting. The wedged shaped wooden "shelf...
Read more