Modifying a standard design — David Taylor - Master Jeweller

August 13th 2016

A customer had viewed one of my designs on the website and wanted to create that design using the gold and diamond from an existing ring of hers. Lets have a look at the making of that ring.

Size is everything

It is very difficult to estimate the diameter of a diamond by sight alone. My customer thought that the diamond in her old ring would fit into my 4ml wide infinity knot wedding ring quite nicely. To reuse existing materials I need to accurately measure them to first determine what is possible and then provide a quote. This customer was from outside Cairns so that process was booked in to be done on an upcoming visit.

As you can see from this photo below, once I had an accurate measurement for the diamond and could superimpose it over the design to scale, it was slightly too large.

My ability to modify the design to suit

My customer thought she would prefer the ring wider than 4mm anyway. What I did next was digitally recreate the design to a width of 5mm using her diamond and to her finger size.

The customer only had the one diamond and as it was to be the main feature of the ring it was decided for me to supply two smaller diamonds to compliment it. With the three knots now bigger in order to take her diamond in the centre, the other two knots would also require bigger diamonds if we went for the same claw setting.

The gap we needed to fill with our budget

The purchase of another two diamonds the same size as the centre one was more than the budget allowed so we decided to use bezel setting for the two smaller diamonds to compensate and add some contrast to the design.

Filled using a smaller diamond and bezel setting.

Checking the size in photos

Next I took that digital creation of the ring and edited it into a photo of my customers hand to scale. She could now see how the ring would look on her hand.

The design scaled into a photo of the customers hand

Checking the size and design with physical drafts

With the design and quote approved I moved onto the making of the silver draft. My customer did not live in Cairns so once completed the gold plated silver draft along with two other bands of the same width, but slightly different sizes, were Express Posted to her.

The rough draft of the design and finger sizers.

The draft was for to her confirm that what she up to now liked in photos, she also liked in reality. She was physically able to try on her ring before I made it!

The other two rings of slightly different sizes were for her to confirm her finger size. With both these confirmed she popped the drafts into the enclosed return Express Post bag for return to me.

The finished ring

Less than a week later and her ring was completed and is shown below. The ring was made in 14ct yellow gold using her existing gold and some additional new gold I supplied. Her diamond is 3mm round and two 1.5mm diamonds were used in the side bezel settings.