Post by Yappy » January 26th, 2012, 8:16 pm
Hello PS Community!
Long time lurker in panic situation.

I have a 3 stone engagement ring that was sent in for repairs a couple of weeks ago because the side stones were loose.

I picked it up last Friday and noticed that the center stone seemed kindof smudgy and dirty so I asked them to give it a quick clean and headed out the door as my meter was about to expire. After I got home, I noticed that it was still kindof smudgy so I cleaned it with a toothbrush and some soapy water and then steamed it over my kettle.

As I was drying my ring - I noticed that it had this weird smudgy cloud on it. Kind of like kid's craft glue after it has dried clear. I spent the entire weekend trying to clean my ring in every way possible known to man and couldn't get rid of it. It seemed to change with different lighting and would vary between just looking dull vs. this ghost hovering in the middle of the diamond. At one point I panicked and thought that maybe this wasn't my diamond but then I thought at certain times that it was my diamond but just dirty.

So after freaking out all weekend - I called an appraiser on Monday and rushed down to have it examined. The stone is not certified (this was bought a long time ago before it was so common to do so) but she had the specs from my original appraisal and was able to confirm that it was my stone - except that it had flux coated all over it. FLUX!!! Have you ever heard of such a thing???

I have googled this thing to death and read a million threads on the PS forums. There is some mention of burnt diamonds but flux???

She noted that you could scrape it off if you tried really hard and showed me so under the microscope but indicated that the only to resolve the situation is to have the stone re-polished.

I have contacted the jeweler about this and they claimed that the stone was removed for the repairs to my ring (in other words - they refuse to have anything to do with it). I'm still confused as to why they would do this to 'tighten' my side stones but what I did notice though is that they seemed to have re-built my prongs and added more metal in-between my stones.

And that is the other issue - the repair job wasn't great either.
The prongs are of varying heights, and the tips are of varying shapes. The diamond is not set in the middle of the setting - if you look at a profile of the ring, you can see that it's shifted to one side. And the metal that was added in between the stones - it is quite a bit thicker and higher on one side than the other. Oh yeah and the metal is different. My ring was made of 19K white gold which was really white and did not require rhodium plating. The solder they used is 18K and quite yellow.

Right now I am trying to get the jeweler to take it back and fix it.
When I contacted them about it - they kindof skirted the issue and noted that my center stone was removed for the repair and that they had to use 18K solder for the repair as using 19K would've melted my setting.

I'm kind of wondering now though whether that is the right way to go as they went on to claim that they had the best manufacturers in the city if not in our lovely country of Canada. So I'm thinking - if you are the best and this is the best you can do . . . maybe I should be going elsewhere for help?

I'm kindof wary of having them re-polish my diamond because frankly I'm not sure they know what they are doing.
I have contacted BGD and Lesley has been super helpful about the situation. I emailed them some pictures and Brian has agreed to take a look at my ring/diamond but there is a chance that we will lose the setting when we unset.

I have faith in Brian's abilities to clean up my diamond but am feeling despondant over potentially having to remake my ring.

But better a new ring than being left with a crappy diamond that was once a beautiful diamond.
So . . . . I'm thinking that it may be better to just suck it up, call it a bad day and just shell out the money to ship the ring over to Brian to see what he could do.

Thoughts from all you experts out there?

Thanks!