Living with a setting

A ring bought to be worn daily will spend some tens of thousands of hours on a hand. Almost everything that goes wrong in that time is predictable, and most of it is preventable by two habits and one appointment a year.

Hardness is not toughness

Diamond is the hardest natural material there is: nothing in ordinary life will scratch it. Hardness is resistance to abrasion, and it is the property the trade advertises.

Toughness is resistance to fracture, and diamond’s is merely good. A diamond has cleavage planes — directions along which the crystal parts more readily than in others — and a sharp blow on the girdle at the wrong angle can chip it. Not often, and not from ordinary knocks, but it happens, and it happens most on stones set with an exposed girdle. This is one of the reasons a rub-over setting is the sensible choice for a ring that will be worn while doing anything at all with the hands.

Emeralds and opals are a different conversation entirely, and if a piece holds one, treat everything below as stricter rather than looser.

The film nobody sees

The most common complaint we hear — that a stone has ‘gone dull’ — is almost never the stone. It is a film of skin oil, hand cream and soap on the pavilion, on the underside, where the owner never looks and where every ray of returned light has to pass twice.

A greasy pavilion does not merely dim a stone. It changes the boundary at the facet surface, and light that should have totally internally reflected leaks instead. The effect is disproportionate to how little dirt is involved.

The fix is warm water, a drop of ordinary washing-up liquid, and a soft toothbrush used on the back of the stone for thirty seconds. Once a fortnight is plenty. Rinse over a closed drain, which is advice that sounds facetious until the first time it is not.

Ultrasonic cleaners

We do not recommend them for general use at home. They are excellent on a clean, sound, untreated stone in a robust setting, and they are how a stone with an existing feather near the surface becomes a stone with a crack. They will also, cheerfully, loosen a claw that was already tired. If a piece holds an emerald, an opal, a pearl, or any fracture-filled or clarity-enhanced stone, an ultrasonic bath is simply not an option.

The annual check

Once a year, have the claws checked by somebody with a loupe and a probe. Metal wears. A claw that has thinned from 0.9mm to 0.5mm over eight years still looks like a claw and no longer behaves like one, and re-tipping four claws is a modest job in a way that recutting a lost stone is not.

The things to feel for yourself, between appointments: a stone that ticks or rattles when the ring is held to the ear and tapped with a fingernail; a claw that catches on wool; a shank that has gone visibly out of round. Any of the three means the ring should come in.

The two habits

Take rings off before the gym, before gardening, and before anything that involves gripping a metal bar. A gold shank will deform around a bar under load, and a deformed shank puts the setting out of true.

Store pieces separately rather than together in a box. The only thing that will scratch a diamond is another diamond, and a soft pouch each is cheaper than a polish.

Everything we make can be brought back to the atelier for cleaning, checking and re-polishing for as long as the house exists. There is no charge for the check.