How do they do it for that price?
25th October 2020 - Customer location: Cairns
Production cost cut #1: poor quality workmanship
The jewellery chain ring to be remade
This ring above is a classic jewellery chain ring. The remaking of this ring I first quoted on back in August 2019. It was just recently I was asked to do the remake.
One benefit of it being poorly made is that unsetting the diamonds was very easy, most being able to be gently pushed out from the back. The first area jewellery chains save money on with these rings is that often they are set by low paid and or low skilled workers. The resulting missing gems is too often seen.
I make mistakes with setting as well …but no wonder the owner of this ring had issue with diamonds falling out.
Production cost cut #2: minimise precious metal used
The fine edges on the inside were uncomfortable.
One of the main issues with the ring was that it was uncomfortable to wear due to the very fine internal edges at the top of the ring. The extent to which those edges are thinned down in this case, as well as the rest of the ring, is to reduce gold weight purely to reduce manufacturing cost.
The problem with that is that once you get to a certain point the ring becomes fragile. This ring when I first saw it was bent out of shape. Not surprising considering the size of this ring and the fact that it only weighed 4.5 grams. We will compare that later to the finished weight of the new ring.
Production cost cut #3: faking white gold
The above image is a heavy crop of a photo taken with my phone, so sorry for the quality. In it you can see patches of the yellow/reddish colour of the 9ct yellow gold amongst the “white gold” diamond setting section of the ring.
The reason those small areas are not white is because the rhodium plating used to make that yellow metal appear white has been removed. The ring is made entirely of yellow gold in one piece. No white gold is used at all!
Making a ring in two pieces requires more effort not only in the forming of those two pieces but in the joining of them together. Also white gold is more expensive than yellow gold.
To save money jewellery chains often manufacture a ring in one piece and simply rhodium plate the sections they want to appear “white gold”. This saves them money but of course is not permanent…..and if you are not aware of it at the time of purchase you will be disappointed when your white gold sections start to turn yellow as the rhodium plating wears off.
Production cost cut #4: using very low quality diamonds
Two of the diamonds from the ring. One yelloer than the other.
The diamonds in this ring were so flawed that two of them had already had pieces of them fall off whilst still in the ring. Perhaps they were even set broken when the ring was new. You will also notice their slight yellow colour with some of the diamonds being more yellow than others.
This was pointed out to the customer prior to the unsetting of the ring. When I reset the ring I replaced these two very inexpensive low quality diamonds.
The remade ring
When I remade the ring I did make the diamond section with white gold so that the colour would be permanent. I also laid out the setting properly so that the diamonds could be set more securely. With a bit of photoshop magic I can make those diamonds look whiter than they really are :)
When I remade the ring I still created a recess under the white gold section but made the area thicker as well as widening up the internal edges of the yellow gold band. The original ring that weighed 4.5 grams at the start now weighed 8.9 grams remade. Just under double the gold weight!
You might ask why remake a jewellery chain design? The reason is that some people really love some of the these designs and made properly they can last like any other high quality piece of jewellery.
Serendipity Falls - Palmerston Highway
I worked Saturday morning but in the afternoon my wife and I spent the afternoon up on the Palmerston Highway. There are many waterfalls along that road but one that few stop at is Serendipity Falls.
Very small waterfall on the side of the road that is a great place to take a break. Blink and you will miss it….and please take your rubbish. Unbelievable how many people will use a beautiful little spot like that as a trash can :( We have started to leave a garbage bag and gloves in the car and take away some of it as we visit spots.
I have been doing quotes, designing and this website post for most of this Sunday so I am heading off into Barron Gorge for a hike and swim this afternoon. Have a great weekend.