My new ring has pits and scratches

[k7lb]

Hi Guys,

I need advice here. I went through the painstaking process of designing a custom ring and having it made. I received it, and it is beautiful but upon close inspection I can see flaws. My question is, should I go through the trouble of returning it and getting it fixed? Can they be fixed?

There are about 4 pits on the lower outer part of the band. There are some rough areas/raised scratches where the halo was soldered on ?? - these look like they could be heated and flattened out/polished. And, I just noticed that 2 out the 10 stones in the halo do not match the size of the others.

These are all things that you would never notice unless you held it up and looked for them.

Lastly, I need to get it re-sized - but maybe I could get one of those pieces to sit below my finger that will make it fit.

 

[tyty333]

Do you have any pics? I would say the 2 stones out of 10 not matching would drive me nuts and I would have to have
that fixed so might as well send it back.

 

[cookies]

I am sorry your custom-made ring has flaws. Is the ring a cad/cast piece? I think the rough areas can probably be polished smooth, but might require a highly skilled bench person to make it 100% smooth. I am guessing the pits will not be easy to fix -- if it is a cast piece, the pits might be the result of a casting failure.

 

[Christina...]

Do you have pics of your ring? I could be over reacting but it would be going back if it were my ring! It would drive me crazy to have stones that didn't match and that is an easy fix and it sounds like it needs some polish work at the very least or possibly recast. I feel horrible that this happened to you, and your jeweler should too and make it right for you!

 

[k7lb]

Thanks for your replies. I'm not feeling so bad about it now. I tried taking pictures, but it is very difficult to capture the flaws on the camera. You can see the pores in this pic below.


I totally might be a perfectionist because the flaws are not noticeable unless you are looking for them. I took it to another jeweler today and he thought that they could buff out the rough parts pretty easily when I have it resized. But, the pores won't really be as fixable. I'm not sure I want them to switch out the halo stones. I actually noticed that at least 4 are smaller than the rest. From the pic you can kinda see that the bottom center stone and the one directly left of it are smaller than the rest. Then the 4th stone from the bottom left is also smaller.


I told the jeweler that made it and she's gonna take it back and see what she can do. She said she had multiple people check it out before sending it out...which I find surprising that no one caught all these things...or they just didn't expect me to notice. Anyway, I'll let you guys know.....

 

[Victor Canera]

K7lb,
The pits on the shank look like porosity; http://www.professionaljeweler.com/archives/articles/1999/jun99/0699fys1.html
This could be fixed with laser soldering. It might be a case though of opening a much bigger problem. Porosity are air bubbles in the metal and they could be signs of much bigger air bubbles underneath the surface. If you're getting it re-sized they could look into the porosity problem.

Good luck.

 

[LGK]

What Victor said. While you have to accept *some* variation and non-loupe-perfection, the porosity is worrisome and the uneven sizes of the halo stones is just not OK, IMO at least. It's not glaringly visible (the stone size I mean) but yeah... that would be really irritating to look at day in and day out, even for a non-perfectionist like me!

What's the center stone BTW? Looks lovely!

 

[k7lb]

OK. So, she's fixing the scratches and resizing it. But, I don't think it is worth the trouble to have her switch out the stones. I think I'll be happy about it. I just didn't want her to think that I didn't notice the issues with it.

By the way it is a pale pink sapphire.