This is just a quick blog about a ring resize that I finished off today. Earlier on this week, I had an email from a client that that previously bought an engagement ring from me, asking if it could be resized. Now, the lovely thing about precious metals is that they can be stretched and squashed, so a suite either way usually is a pretty quick job. However, this ring needed to be stretched 4 sizes bigger, so needed to have a small extra piece of metal added in. Again, not really a difficult job as there was plenty of space around the solder join to add in the extra silver. So, I did what I’ve done many times and stood the stone in a big blog of heat protection paste before soldering either side of the new metal. This all went well until I went to look at the stone after soldering.....and......agghh.....it wasn’t blue.....it had turned a kind of khaki green!

I quite liked the colour, but my client was expecting to get a blue aquamarine back, so I accepted the fact that I’d have to replace it. BUT, this morning, just as I was about to email my stone dealer, I noticed that from the back of the setting, it still looked blue! I gave it a few minutes in the ultrasonic cleaning tank......a bit more blue, until after about 10 more minutes of cleaning it was fully back to its original spendor! Hoorah!!

So what had happened? Well, I like to think that it was a magic colour changing aquamarine, or possibly it was just a build up of grime (moisturiser/hairspray/soap/dead skin cells etc) but the moral of this story is........next time, remember to clean behind all the stones BEFORE I heat them up!

Colour changing Aquamarine?

Preparations for a ‘different’ kind of wedding fair.

Not my usual sort of repair.