Modifying a design to existing materials

10th June 2022 - Customer location: Cairns

The above ring was a remodel I did back in 2017. I was given a start design and this is how it turned out using my customers gems. Both myself and the customer love this ring.

A mockup of how the design will scale to the other customers main diamond.

Fast forward to 2022 and another customer has seen the previous ring and asked to make something along those lines using her old jewellery. She has no yellow gold so the ring will be all yellow and her diamonds are far bigger.

I like everything I make to be as unique as possible, that is what I feel people in general come to me for. Even though we are using a design made before you can see how far away from the look of that original ring we already are.

A photo supplied to size some of the materials for the design and quote.

From past with this customer I knew the exact size of the main gem to be used and the amount of gold. What I did not know was the size of the two diamonds to be added to the shoulders. The design was created via email and to give me some idea of the diamond sizes for the shoulders the above photo was taken and sent to me.

Once the quote was approved and the diamonds unset we discovered that there was a lot more diamond under the metal than should be and that one diamond was larger than the other. I had to work around this and to a degree issues like this occur regularly when recycling materials.

All the old gold that we recycled was hallmarked 18ct but I suspect from the colour some of it some may have been alloyed from Krugerrands. Almost all the jewellery was made in Africa and converting gold coins into jewellery is common practise there.

The Krugerrand, unlike our Australian $100 face value gold bullion coins, is not pure gold. It is 91.67% gold and 8.33% copper, hence if this is not allowed for in alloying the result can be a redder 18ct yellow gold alloy than normal.

The 18ct yellow gold in this ring is a bit of an odd colour to me but the customer knew what to expect and is happy with it.

The new ring is now one that my customer loves to wear and that is what it is all about. Have a great weekend.