Just prong tightened, but left dents badly

[Moko]

Hi everyone,

I would like to get your opinions. Last week I went to my local jeweler for cleaning my e-ring because I was finding black inclusion like smudge on my VS1 stone.
I thought they were just polishing compound, but they were some left over from platinum, so they re-set the stone again to clean. (It was the 3rd try for them to set the stone properly ). OK everything looked perfect that time, so I was almost satisfied. But my appraiser found that one of the prongs was loose.

So I went to the jeweler today and just handed to the ring to the lady at the customer services desk. Then the bench jeweler pressed the prong down to close the gap. The customer service lady said, "Now it's perfect". I looked through my loupe to check the ring just for sure. Then I found several big dents on that prong

. It looked like either kitchen sponge (those with little hole) or the lunar surface

. I was shocked and about to cry.

Then my favorite regular sales person came out for me to double check to make sure everything is OK. (He was busy with other customer when I arrived, so I did not want to disturb him and I went to the customer service desk) So, I complained him (in nice way).
He explained to me that that is the only way to press down the prongs and it always leaves the dent. He took my ring back and had it polished in order to minimize the dents, so that it won't show the dents too much. But he said he couldn’t really make the prong smooth again because it will loose too much metal. It looks little better now, but those dents are still pretty big and deep

. I know I cannot see it in my naked eyes. But I am still pretty sad.


Is it common to leave dents on prongs by tightening or pressing down?

 

[february2003bride]

When I had my diamond removed from the original 6 prong Blue Nile setting and into the ArtCarved setting, there were nicks on the BN prongs. Today I had the same jeweler take my diamond out of the ArtCarved setting and into a new setting, and while I haven''t checked the ArtCarved prongs yet, the prongs on my new setting are perfect, no dings at all. So maybe it just happens when the diamond is being removed?

Either way, I''m so sorry to hear that happened!

 

[Moko]

Hi February2003bride,

Thank you for your reply. No they did not remove the stone today. They just pressed one prong down. It was about 5 minutes work.
So he simply pressed one prong down with using some tool, and it left the dents.

 

[Moko]

I am sending some pictures. Sorry the picture did not come out good. Hope you can see the dents I am talking about.
Please tell me what you think. Making dents is an inevitable result for tightening prongs?

 

[Moko]

One more..

 

[Moko]

I understand I cannot do anything now, but making dents cannot be avoided?
If I need to tighten some other prongs in the future for some reason, should I expect these damage on the prongs? Does anyone know? Please help!

 

[ilovethiswebsite]

I don''t know much around rings but I don''t think that is supposed to happen....

 

[arjunajane]

Date: 5/21/2008 9:47:46 PM
Author: Moko
I understand I cannot do anything now, but making dents cannot be avoided?
If I need to tighten some other prongs in the future for some reason, should I expect these damage on the prongs? Does anyone know? Please help!

I''m not a jeweler and hopefully one of the professionals will see this, but I certainly wouldn''t accept that as a necessary side effect of tightening.
I imagine the banchman at your jewelers may not have been doing his best work that day, kwim?

 

[Moko]

Maybe this photo is eaier to see the dents on the prong..

 

[Moko]

Sorry I meant this one..

 

[Diamond*Dana]

I am by no means a professional, but that has never happened when I have had prongs tightened.

 

[ilovethiswebsite]

Is ur ring white gold or platinum??

 

[Moko]

Ilovethiswebsite, Arjunajane and Diamond Dana

Thank you so much for your replies. I was about to cry when I saw your replies because I was desperate for the information. Also I wanted to know what PS ladies would think of this work, so I really really appreciate your replies.

Ilovethiswebsite, the ring is platinum.

 

[Kaleigh]

Not loving the dent. I think they applied too much pressure. It may be able to be smoothed out, but don't know that I'd trust them to do the work. Hopefully the experts will chime in. I'd vote for getting it polished out, and the stone reset. Or a combination of all, just don't think you need to live with a prong that is so dented. I am sorry, this is fixable, so no worries, OK???

 

[strmrdr]

If its not eye visible don't mess with it.
Settings will not stand up under 10x.
Its a common tool mark from a prong tool.

When the stone is first mounted there is enough metal there to remove them totally and maintain enough material in the prong.
They are oversize for that very reason.
When it is just a tightening there might not be enough material to totally remove the dents.
Eye clean is the best you can expect most of the time.

 

[Moko]

Thank you Storm,

You answered my question. OK, now I think I understand. So, fixing the prong usually leave the tool mark – “the dents,” but the reason we usually don’t see those dents is because they polish those dents out, and which means that they are sliming the prong to do that. So, if there is no extra metal left on the pong, a jeweler cannot make it smooth

.
Wow, so that means every time we fix the prongs (even just tightening), we are losing the metal, right?

Like you said, in my case, probably my prong did not have extra metal to lose for the cosmetic finish.
So, in the future, if I need to tighten other prongs or some fixing needed, I should expect these damages on the prongs. I hope I will not need to fix the prongs again.

Kaleigh, thank you for your kind messages. Your warm words really helped to heal my pain.

 

[strmrdr]

yea pretty much anytime you do anything with the prongs you lose some metal.
Often it just isn''t in the affected prong if the others have to be polished down to match.

 

[anemone]

Is it expensive to have a new head soldered to a solitaire ring? $50? $100? More?

 

[strmrdr]

Date: 5/22/2008 1:26:22 PM
Author: anemone

Is it expensive to have a new head soldered to a solitaire ring? $50? $100? More?

with the price of plat its more than that.

 

[Bluer1]

I have been pricing settings in the past few weeks. My local B&M jeweler wanted $500 for a platinum 6 prong head, to change out a head setting.

EEK...that seemed high. So, I verified the cost with GOG....and that was "close" to the going rate.

 

[Moko]

Date: 5/22/2008 3:58:20 PM
Author: Bobbi
My local B&M jeweler wanted $500 for a platinum 6 prong head, to change out a head setting.

EEK...that seemed high. So, I verified the cost with GOG....and that was ''close'' to the going rate.

Anemone and Bobbi, Thank you for chiming in!

I think we need to stop being perfectionist at some point. Because if we ask too much, the metal of prongs eventually run out by fixing and polishing, and we may be end up with changing the head. Or we need to change the entire ring! I don''t want to spend another $$$$$ again!

Like Storm suggested, if the ring looks fine in naked eyes, sometimes it is wise to leave it as it even if we found some cosmetic problems by looking through 10x loupe

 

[february2003bride]

My new setting has a seperate prices for the band and the crown/prongs. For my platinum crown, it was $213.00.