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Cleaning a Diamond Ring 

Let’s face it, when it comes to jewellery, we all generally think of diamonds. There is nothing quite like having a freshly cleaned ring on your finger fresh from a Jeweller. The light bouncing off your diamond just right can make you feel like a million dollars. So it’s only normal to want to keep it looking nice and clean right? So I’ve put together some tips on cleaning a diamond ring or any diamond Jewellery. 

While Diamonds actually repel water they unfortunately do the complete opposite with grease and oil. Diamonds attract grease and oil more than most other Gemstones around. The natural oils from your skin, the hand lotion you might use before bed and even some soaps and perfumes can all get stuck to a diamond. 

So what to do if you find yourself in need of cleaning your Diamond? Well you could take it to an experienced Jeweller to get the best results, but you don’t need to every time. You can just as easily give your Diamond a clean at home using some simple techniques. 

So what to use?

Cleaning a diamond ring isn’t too hard, the best thing to use is Fairy liquid or a dish soap solution. In addition to this you could use a gentle shampoo like baby shampoo. Just avoid anything that contains a moisturiser, this will have the opposite effect on your jewellery and leave a film on the diamond. 

Get the tap running hot and fill up a bowl, add the washing up liquid or shampoo and give it a stir. Pop your Jewellery in the hot water and leave for around 20 – 30min. This will allow the dirt and grime on the back of the stones to start to break down. Gently use a soft tooth brush around the back of the stones to remove any dirt trapped and then rinse under WARM water. Then repeat if you need. Never go from hot water to cold water as this could damage your diamond or stones.

Cleaning like this should ideally be done once a week. Yep! Once a week! This will allow the build up of oil and grease to be kept at bay and will be easier to clean. I’d also recommend getting an experienced Jeweller to give it a once over to check the settings are all nice and tight and give it a professional clean and polish once a year. 

What you shouldn’t use to clean your Diamonds

This actually comes up a fair bit. Never use bleach to clean your Jewellery. You might think this is the ideal product to clean your Jewellery as it cleans your house so well.. its not, don’t use it. If you use bleach on your Jewellery you could potentially ruin it. Bleach is an extremely harsh chemical and can cause damage to some metals. Some solders can contain elements that will react with the bleach or chlorine and oxidise the solder. 

Other things to avoid would be toothpaste, thats meant for you teeth only! Also avoid baking soda. Toothpaste and baking soda are actually very abrasive and can cause scratches on your lovely Jewellery. 

Ultrasonic Machines

Now ultrasonic machines are great. Professional Jewellers use them all the time when cleaning Jewellery. I have one and its great… but….  these machines should really only be used by a Goldsmith who knows what they’re doing, especially if your item of Jewellery contains stones. I’m often asked about them and if I’d recommend people getting one. The machine works by blasting sound waves through a heated tank to dislodge any dirt and grime that builds up on the Jewellery.

They generally make a little noise and the liquid will slosh about. The problem is that if the item of Jewellery has any stones in, this can potentially lead to the stones coming out. This generally happens if the item of Jewellery hasn’t been serviced regularly, the piece is worn or the stones haven’t been set properly to begin with. A Goldsmith should check your item of Jewellery before and after its been in an Ultrasonic machine to check for loose stones and tighten any stones and settings that need attention. 

Servicing

Servicing your Jewellery (especially rings) is something I’d recommend every 12 – 18 months. The tips of claws can get damaged and worn over time so it’s well worth just taking a little time to make sure your diamonds or precious stones are secure. Checking over a ring and a full clean and polish can cost as little as £30. If your item of Jewellery needs work then I can give you a quote to restore it to a new condition. If you’d like a piece of Jewellery checked over and cleaned and polished get in touch and I’ll give you a quote based on your requirements. 

Thanks for reading 

Settings for engagement rings. 

So you’re looking to propose to your loved one, you head out to the high street or fire up the Mac to start looking and all of a sudden theres more than one type of Engagement ring available with just about any shape of diamond you can think of. Not only that, once you’ve made your mind up on a shape of diamond you have a choice of settings to go with that particular stone. The choices that lie before you can sometimes be a bit overwhelming! 

Fear not! I am here to help and give you some things to think about.  

Every stone needs a seat. 

So you know what shape stone / diamond you want to go for and now you need a ring for it. The first thing you need to decide is the setting. This is the part of the ring that holds the stone / diamond in place. This is without question the most important part of any ring. Get the setting style right and the stone you’ve chosen will be shown off to its very best. Get it wrong and it could jeopardise the stones beautiful sparkle. 

Light

A diamond (or any stone for that matter) is as only as good as the light around it. After all, you cant see a diamond in the dark, no matter how expensive it might be. If the setting is big and bulky, you’re going to be hiding that stone from all the lovely light that could be bouncing its way through the diamond and around the facets (little flats around a stone to help reflect light).

Strength. 

The setting (or collet as its sometimes known) has to be strong. After all, you don’t want that expensive stone popping out on an idle Tuesday afternoon while you’re shopping.. because your never find it no matter how hard you try. 

Light vs Strength.

More light into a diamond means less metal round the diamond. However less metal can sometimes mean less strong.. but it doesn’t have to!

My advise, try and get a bit of both. Something that shows off the diamond but wont fall apart when you least expect it. Having a Setting thats handmade instead of cast will instantly make the setting stronger. If there are four claws on a Round stone, look at bottom of the claws not just the top where the stone sits. Most settings get their strength from the base of the collet, where everything meets together and attaches to the ring. 

Most importantly ask questions. Google is a great tool for finding inspiration and seeing what might work well. Ask your Goldsmith to give you some advise on settings and see if they could do a drawing if they can to see what fits. 

Process of elimination. 

I see many clients thinking they have no idea what they want or where to start. You have to start somewhere so my advise would be to get stuck in. It’s fairy easy to work out what you don’t like and work from there. I like to think in stages. Stage one might be the Diamond, finding the right shape and quality to suite your budget. Each stage leads on from the last so there’s no point thinking about the rest of the ring until you have the first stage cracked. 

Hopefully this has helped in a small way. If you’d like any advise on Engagements rings or any rings in general don’t hesitate to contact me! 

 History Of Diamonds

They form deep in the earth under extreme heat and pressure. Made solely of Carbon, Most Diamonds were formed at depths of 93 to 155 miles in the earths mantle and most natural diamonds have ages of between 1 billion and 3.5 billion years old.

It all started in India, where diamonds were gathered from the rivers and the streams. Diamonds have been known in India for at least 3000 years but most likely 6000! Many historians estimate that India was trading with Diamonds from as early as the forth century BC! 

As time went on, India’s diamonds found there way to Western Europe and by the 1400s Diamonds were becoming fashionable amongst Europe’s most wealthiest.

By the 1700s Indias Diamonds supplies had begun to dwindle. Brazil had suddenly emerged as an important source for diamonds. They were first discovered in the pans of gold miners as they sifted through the gravel of local rivers. When brazil reached its full potential, they dominated the diamond market for more than 150 years.  

So Why do we wear Diamond engagement rings as Apposed to other Gemstones?

While Engagement rings have been around for centuries, the use of diamonds hasn’t really been around that long. This is simply because there weren’t all that many diamonds readily available on the world market, so diamond engagement rings were pretty rare even up until the late 19th Century. An early exception was Archduke Maximilian of Austria whom proposed to Mary of Burgundy in 1477 with a Diamond Engagement ring. 

So if diamonds weren’t used, what was? 

Well during the 16th and 17th century A Gimmal ring was often used as an engagement ring. A Gimmal ring is a ring with two or three links that fit together to form one complete ring, a bit like a puzzle. They were also known as joint rings in Elizabethan England.

In the 16th and 17th centuries, such rings were fashionable in England, Germany, and some other countries. The engaged couple would wear one link each and rejoin them to use as a wedding ring. With triple link rings, a third person could witness the couple’s vows and hold the third part of the ring until the marriage. 

Ancient Times

Although ancient Egyptians are often credited for inventing the engagement ring and Ancient greeks with having adopted the tradition, the actual history of the engagement ring can only really be reliably traced back to Ancient Rome. In the second century, the Roman bride-to-be was given two rings, a gold one which she wore in public, and one made of iron which she wore at home while attending to household duties.

Victorian Era

During the victorian era diamonds were found in 1866 in South Africa. By 1872 the diamond mines were producing more than a Million carats every year! As a result, those of lesser means were now able to afford diamonds and production was increased.

De Beers And Marketing. 

The popularity of the diamond engagement ring really declined after the first world war and even more so in The United States during the great depression. In the 1930s the price of diamonds collapsed and the diamond industry was in a very bad way. In 1938 De Beers alone started a marketing campaign that would change the way we see engagement rings today. After the initial market researching phase, advertising started in 1939. The very first stage of the campaign was educating people on the 4 Cs, Cut, Clarity, Colour and carat. This new information on the Gemstone gave interest and people started to respond. 

More information on the 4 Cs can be found on my Diamond Guide.

Hollywoods biggest stars and Celebrity’s were wearing diamonds. This encouraged leading fashion designers to take note and diamond rings became a new trend.  

By 1947 the slogan “A Diamond Is Forever” was introduced. This slogan alone helped underscore the diamond’s significance as an enduring, unbreakable symbol of love and is still used to this day. 

My process of making.

Engagement rings.

The process of making an engagement ring. Engagement rings are beautiful, complex and detailed. There is a lot of time, design and craftsmanship put forward to make them. Thought needs to go into strength and how the piece will wear over time. With technology moving the jewellery trade forward in 2018 there are many new ways to make a piece of Jewellery and engagement rings are no different. CAD stands for Computer Aided Designing. This is the process of designing a piece of jewellery on a computer and printing the design out via a 3D wax printer. This model is then cast using a method called loss wax casting. The end result is an unfinished piece of jewellery that then just needs cleaning up. This style of jewellery making is great and it has open up the way jewellery is made today.

It is however not how I make Jewellery. Call me old school or old fashioned but there is something about putting pencil to paper and sketching out designs that I feel much more personal and nostalgic.

So whats my process.

So upon meeting I workout with my clients what a rough design is going to be. If they have a picture of what they’d like already then theres sometimes no need for drawings. On the other hand if the design is not so straight forward then I would do a drawing to show how I think it would look.

The next stage is making. We’ll keep it simple and say we’re making a Single stone diamond ring. The making can vary slightly depending on the design. Sometimes I might carve out the entire ring by hand in wax and then cast this wax model to get the finished ring. I would probably say more often than not I’d try and make it from the desired metal from the world go.

So we start with a collet, this is the part that holds the stone. A collet is made to fit the stone exactly. In this process i’m constantly picking up the stone and measuring it against what i’m making. I start with a bar of metal and mill it out to the desired thickness and width. Then this is turned up into the shape of the stone, round for round stones, square for square stones etc.. If claws are to be holding the stone then the next stage is to add them. This is either done by cutting and filing out the collet or for a basket setting, wire is attached to the collet to make the claws.

Once I’m happy with the collet and the stones fits perfectly its now time for cleaning it up and making the shank or band. For a simple parallel shank then i’d make up a band by milling out the metal to the desired thickness, width and length. The length is determined by the finger size of the client. Once the metal is the correct dimensions i’d then turn up the metal using half round pliers and joining the ends with solder. We now have a band! The band is heated to soften and then beaten round on a steel mandrel.

We now have a collet and a band. I have to clean them both up by sandpapering and polishing. I also have to submerge them in an acid to remove any soldering Flux used in the solder process. I also like to give both parts a polish before I put them together.

Next I measure the collet and remove a piece the same size from the band so that the collet will fit snug. This is then soldered into place and the cleaning process starts again before we set the stone in.

Once the ring is clean and polished I then start setting the diamond into place. This is done by using a collet seat burr on a pendant drill. The seat is to be cut the exact size of the stone so that the stone sits now into the collet nice and snug. Once the stone is tight the claws are bent over and the excess claws are trimmed off.

Were there, well almost anyway! Another round of polishing is required, the polish is washed off for the final time and dried on a polishing cloth. Besides Hallmarking thats it! Were there! The very basics on making a single stone diamond ring with a parallel shank band.

Thanks for reading!