Did my fiance's ring undergo a chemical reaction?

[yssie]

diamondnewguy - any updates on what happened here?

 

[Dreamer_D]

Two Summer's ago I noticed that all my yellow gold rings left black/green rings on my fingers. This continued for two days and remember I was dehydrated at the time. A few days later when well hydrated the problem resolved and hasn't happened again.

Lisa sorry to threadjack, but is there a thread about the ring in your avatar? It is scrumptious! I could not find pictures in your threads archive.

 

[purplesilk]

Maybe off topic, but is it stamped only 18 k inside the band of the e-ring?
In my country, Italy, it does mean gold plated...in Italian gold jewels it must be stamped a small exagon and inside it 750, only this mark guarantees that it is all genuine 18 carat gold.
What about US gold?

 

[TheDoctor]

Really, that looks like mercury. People can come into contact with that contaminant in hospitals or in home-heating industries.
Whatever it is will burn off with torch heat, applied carefully under a fume hood with a protective boric acid barrier on the entire ring.

 

[oldminer]

The picture shows a nearly incredible event on your ring. Rather than heat it and risk mercury poisoning issues, just have a jeweler polish the area of the stain and see if it just polishes away and leaves no trace of it being there. It does look like it is on the surface, but we won't know until a tiny amount of surface is polished awy to reveal what ought to be a total;ly unaffected zone beneath the discoloration. If this stain goes deeply into the ring's shank it would be very unsual and the only one I have ever seen before. Polishing won't create much in the way of dangerous fumes because a professional polishing machine has suction that draws any fumes away from the polisher's face. These fumes would disperse in the air behind the polishing machine, but I doubt there is any content present that would injure anyone at a distance of several feet. I'd expect the yellow gold to immediately show up under what I believe to be a shallow discoloration on the surface. If it runs deep, don't polish more. Play it safe.

 

[TheDoctor]

Respectfully disagree. An attempt at polishing away mercury is a mistake, as it will still become airborne while contaminating polishing wheels and distributing itsself onto every other piece in the shop being polished. The mercury will be further impregnated into the material through polishing.

Any manufacturer who does casting or advanced benchwork and follows all safety protocols can vapourize the mercury without fear of contamination. It could be done outdoors as well, but that is primitive and riskier.

 

[oldminer]

THANKS> I appreciate the warning. Please follow the guidance given by The Doctor.....We don't want you or anyone else to get sick from taking my uninformed advice on such an important matter...

 

[PinkTower]

Just wondering if you ever found out what happened to the ring.

 

[diamondnewguy]

Re: Did my fiance's ring undergo a chemical reaction? - Upda

Hi all,

So I have great news to share. We got the ring back from BGD this past week and the ring looks brand new. While they are just as mystified as what caused the event, they were able to remove what they termed a coating on the ring. As some have suggested here, it did not go below the surface, and was able to be scraped/polished off. They also mentioned exposing the ring to various tests (ultrasound), which I do not really understand, and could find no defaults. Anyway, long story short the ring is back and beautiful as ever.

I guess it will always be a mysterious, and hopefully we will not have a repeat event.

Thanks to all for their help and words of encouragement.

Best,
DNG

 

[yssie]

Well - that's good news!


Here's to hoping it was a once in a lifetime event

 

[Black Jade]

Very interesting.
I'm learning that mysterious things can happen to gold.
I went with a friend to a pawn shop this past week to try to replace her husband's wedding ring. Her husband did something that involved putting the ring in a fire or too near a fire, years ago and the color completely changed and messed up, so that the two of them were certain that it was not 14k gold as marked, but plated in some way, but they couldn't get back to the jeweller to complain and so for a significant anniversary she decided to buy him a new one. Surprise, surprise. While we were looking at new rings, the pawn shop owner looked at the original (messed up) ring) and said, this is definitely gold, we can fix this. INto the back he went. Mysterious sounds, a mysterious (but slight) smell. Out he comes and this ring looks absolutely brand new--my friend couldn't believe it was the same one until she looked inside and saw the original engraving (now also become much more clearly readable again). We were so shocked. Also pleased, as he refused to charge us for this miracle (although he missed making a sale by doing it. She was all set to buy another ring). He just said, please come back to us to have it sized (which it does need, like many of us, her husband has a bigger finger now than when they bought this ring).
I still don't know what happened with the fire, just as it is unknown what happened to the ring in this thread. But its nice to know that these things can sometimes be fixed.
I'm glad you also had a happy ending. I guess no more cleaning while wearing ring. I ruined a valuable jade bracelet forever by cleaning wearing it, some time ago. Anyone know if miracles can be done with jade?