August 2nd 2013

There have been people manufacturing jewellery too thin for many years. I see bags and bags of it every year broken and unrepairable. Today lets look at such a piece.

This Masonic ring was brought to me to be resized down about 5 sizes.  Such a resize would be a bit of a stretch for a well made ring but for this one there was not much chance of a successful result. It had been made so thin that I knew it would distort and probably split where the inside sleeve joined the sides if I tried to resize it.

So how did I know the head of this ring was too thin to handle a resize like this? Well the weight of the ring was just 6.5 grams including the Onyx and from its size I estimated it should weigh closer to 12 grams, double that weight! 

I explained this to my customer and was asked to remake the ring properly using the existing onyx. This is the inside profile of the ring once I had cut it to remove the onyx.

With the onyx removed we were left with just 5.7 grams of gold. As the photo clearly shows this ring had been made as thin as possible to reduce weight. 

Whether the savings made in the reduced use of gold were passed onto the customer or retained by the seller (more likely) the end result is the same, a piece of jewellery so thin from the day of its creation that it was destined for problems.

If you want a piece of jewellery that will pass the test of time, handle the odd bump and bit of rough treatment then it needs to have constructural integrity. 

This ring after being remade weighed 11.8 grams (excluding the Onyx) which is just a touch over double the gold weight of the original.