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A Tale of Two Damaged Rings.
The welcome relaxation of Covid restrictions has brought family visitors, and with them two damaged rings for repair. Both were thumb rings, which seem to be particularly vulnerable.
The first, a 9ct white from 2003, had a missing flush set sapphire, easily replaced by refreshing the seat with a slightly bigger burr and using a stone from Cookson’s medley of ten.
The second, darkened silver, was distorted while jumping a stile and broken at the seam. I’d rather they had run a mile, or eaten a country pancake, as we used to tease when they were young.
Luckily it was set with small black diamonds, which gave me a rare opportunity to try out the much repeated dictum, that you can solder items with diamonds in place.
First a burnisher was taken around the flush set stones to make sure that they were firmly in place. Then the edges were scraped and brought together with soft jawed pliers. Soldering proved to be simple enough, and the ring was allowed to air cool before pickling.
The distortion was corrected using a ring stretcher, so avoiding the use of a hammer. Then lots more burnishing to secure the stones, and partial replacement of the patina with diluted Platinol. Hopefully further darkening will continue naturally. Dennis.
