Yearly Jewelry Clean and Check
New Years Resolution: Let's keep our jewelry maintained.
Jewelry, like so many expensive items that we purchase, needs to be cleaned and checked often. Jewelry is similar to a car. Weather, oil, bugs, worn tires, etc. all need to be checked on cars so that they don't lose that shine or quit running. A ring has different culprits (hand lotion and cooking ingredients are two I commonly see) but will lose the brilliance and quit being functional exactly the same way. Just the way tires wear out on a car, the prongs holding your precious gems can wear and result in a lost stone.
So here is a challenge for the New Year. Don’t procrastinate your clean and checks. Keep your jewelry, especially your ring and bracelets, cleaned and checked (at least once a year) as you do your car.
There is a real technique to properly checking your jewelry, that I have learned from years of experience. When we check your jewelry we do the following:
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Using magnification we look thoroughly at the piece.
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Taking tweezers or a probe, we poke and push at all of the stones to see make sure they are tight in the mounting.
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We take note of how dirty the item is to see at what level it needs to be cleaned or refinished.
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We check all of the prongs and channels to see if they are worn down.
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We look at the shank (back side of the ring) to see if it is worn.
After going through these steps we determine if it is going to be a simple clean and check to restore the ring back to its original condition or if the job will take the super powers of a master jeweler to make it like new. Whichever case it is, when the ring is picked up, our clients are amazed.
Below is an example of a ring before and after the restoration process. On the left is the ring once all the stones were removed for cleaning and prior to re-tipping all the prongs. On the right is the finished product.
Don't let your rings get to the point of no return. Get them cleaned and checked often.