Over the course of 5 months, I worked with a Jewler in my area to design my wedding band. I'm not someone who wears jewelry, and I wanted the ring to be special, so the stones were ones that I found in my travels around the world. The garnets were from a rough, uncut geode that I got from Antarctica when I worked there.
I've had 2 other rings made by this jeweler, so I trusted them to do good work. We worked on a design, and they told me that they would see what they could get from the geode. I didn't hear anything back, so after a month or so, I emailed them and they said they got a good number of workable pieces. I was very excited, and we finalized the design in May.
Skip to June, and I had only heard from them once, after I reached out the them at the end of June to check on the progress, and they informed me that the band was finished, but because the stones were so small, they would require several passes at the shop, and that they would be in touch with updates.
At the end of July, I ended up calling them to check about the status, and they told me it was finished.
I picked it up, and after bringing it home and getting a good chance to look at it, I'm pretty unhappy and unsure what to do.
I know that small stones are often held in with epoxy, but the work itself seems sloppy. The garnets I'm pretty sure are actually just crushed stone in resin, and part of what makes me believe this is that when the girl at the counter retrieved my ring, she also happened upon an enveloped with what looked like crushed garnet in it. They gave me back quite a lot of the geode, so I'm not sure how much they really took from it. There is also quite a bit of give if you push your fingernail into the garnets, like pushing into soft plastic.
The rhodium plating seems like it was done after the garnets were set, and there are parts of the ring where you can see the gold around the setting.
The sapphire has resin overflow onto the inner band.
The jeweler had not discussed with me about crushing the garnet and putting it in resin. I honestly am not even 100% sure if that's what they did. I feel that I have been incredibly amenable, and understanding during the whole process. Considering that we started in March, and that I approved the design in May, I feel like the end result does not reflect the high price I paid.
I'm sorry for the long post, but I'm looking for other opinions on the piece. I don't even feel angry, just sad. The ring itself looks like it was a rush job, and very amateurish. I'm not even sure of what to ask the jeweler to do to fix this for me.
TL;DR
Jeweler worked on my ring for months, had poor communication, and the end result isn't great.
I've had 2 other rings made by this jeweler, so I trusted them to do good work. We worked on a design, and they told me that they would see what they could get from the geode. I didn't hear anything back, so after a month or so, I emailed them and they said they got a good number of workable pieces. I was very excited, and we finalized the design in May.
Skip to June, and I had only heard from them once, after I reached out the them at the end of June to check on the progress, and they informed me that the band was finished, but because the stones were so small, they would require several passes at the shop, and that they would be in touch with updates.
At the end of July, I ended up calling them to check about the status, and they told me it was finished.
I picked it up, and after bringing it home and getting a good chance to look at it, I'm pretty unhappy and unsure what to do.
I know that small stones are often held in with epoxy, but the work itself seems sloppy. The garnets I'm pretty sure are actually just crushed stone in resin, and part of what makes me believe this is that when the girl at the counter retrieved my ring, she also happened upon an enveloped with what looked like crushed garnet in it. They gave me back quite a lot of the geode, so I'm not sure how much they really took from it. There is also quite a bit of give if you push your fingernail into the garnets, like pushing into soft plastic.
The rhodium plating seems like it was done after the garnets were set, and there are parts of the ring where you can see the gold around the setting.
The sapphire has resin overflow onto the inner band.
The jeweler had not discussed with me about crushing the garnet and putting it in resin. I honestly am not even 100% sure if that's what they did. I feel that I have been incredibly amenable, and understanding during the whole process. Considering that we started in March, and that I approved the design in May, I feel like the end result does not reflect the high price I paid.
I'm sorry for the long post, but I'm looking for other opinions on the piece. I don't even feel angry, just sad. The ring itself looks like it was a rush job, and very amateurish. I'm not even sure of what to ask the jeweler to do to fix this for me.
TL;DR
Jeweler worked on my ring for months, had poor communication, and the end result isn't great.
.
300x240.png)