Atlas Jewelers Bench Talk

This ring was blogged about a few weeks ago. We made this remount ring for a customer duplicating the three separate rings that were soldered together. The center ring was a beautiful invisible set princess and baguette ring that was having the typical issues with continual stone loss. We kept the basic design of the set, but channel set the stones instead of invisible setting. The prong set round diamond bands were integrated in the new ring. The original ring had very little metal around the invisible set stones as compared to the new ring, so after it was done, the customer felt that it seemed just too bulky, from what she was used to, with all the channels of metal. This should have been addressed in the wax model viewing part of the project. It can be hard for some people to envision the design even with the actual wax, 3D model in their hands. I think that some people have a hard time because they are seeing a nonmetallic (non-reflective) piece of hard colored wax. Our goal is to always do what we can do to please our customer. That is why they come to us. There are many jewelers to chose from. What good is being highly skilled and caring about craftsmanship and value if customers walk away dissatisfied because of a misunderstanding?

The first sinking feeling was that there was no way to make these major changes that did not include remaking the entire ring. I came up with a plan to try a big modification first. I cut the ring into 3 pieces. I filed and sanded out the strip of metal between the round diamonds and the channel set stones.
The customer asked that the outer bands should be more at the same level as the center section, so I welded the center section a bit lower. I am proud to say that all the modifications were done as welding, either with the torch or the laser. There is no solder used on this ring.
The ring turned out great. The before looked great too. But now she has the ring that she wanted and we got to do it for her. Took a little more work to get there, but it was worth it.