The hardness of our jewelry materials

[Volred]

Is there a measurement we use for the hardness of a platinum ring compared to a 14k gold ring? Or an 18k gold ring?

For example:
If you take a piece of 10mm reinforcing bar used in construction you can bend this piece of metal pretty easy
If you take a piece of 20mm reinforcing bar you cannot bend this bar at all. It is too thick to be bent.

I know that we can rate the hardness of materials on a scale of 0-10 where 0 is what... water? and 10 would be DIAMOND. If you take a diamond you can scratch any other surface.
But if you take a diamond and drop it off of a 1o storey building the diamond would shatter when it hits the bottom. Whereas a rubber ball, or a steel stud would not shatter, but would bounce, and/or deform permanently.

I remember seeing some hardness rating of concrete, compared to steel, compared to glass in school. And you can get glass pretty hard.

SO... Now time for my question:
I am designing a ring for my girl. I want to have a silver ring (platinum or gold I have not decided yet) and this silver ring will have a tension setting, holding the ring in place. Where the ring supports the diamond, I want to have glass. Yes that is right. I want to have glass supporting the ring (in a tension ring none the less). This way the diamond will be fully exposed to all light from all sides. Others will be able to see the ring from all sides.

I do not want a ring that is going to be covered on the bottom by the ring, I want the ring to stand out and soak in all light that it can.

Drawings for this ring are almost finished. (I work on this ring when I have nothing else to do at work)

Do any of you think that it is possible to mix glass and platinum? or mix glass and gold?
Would there be a wear and tear issue?
Would the glass shatter if bumped against something? Where platinum would not. (this is where hardness comes into play)
Would there be an issue of the two materials interacting and discoloring, or seperating if they are in close contact?
Would I even be able to take glass and form it to make a prong at all? Or is this work just too too fine for glass?

 

[mike04456]

The problem here is that you are confusing hardness with strength. The two are not the same. Glass is harder than a lot of gem materials, and is a little softer than quartz. However, its strength is usually quite low (fiberglass is quite a bit stronger, but I don't think that's what you have in mind). Likewise, diamond is not very strong--its compressive strength is far less than, say, steel, which is why crushing diamond is not difficult.




The strength of most metals, whether you're talking about gold, iron, or titanium, has a lot to do with how they are manufactured. Cast gold has less strength than worked or machined gold; machined gold is not as strong as die-struck gold.




I don't think you could create a tension-set ring using glass prongs; my guess is that they would break in normal usage and probably during the setting process. Rock crystal quartz might work, though I wouldn't bet the farm on that.

 

[valeria101]

Is design your trade? This seems to be the month of design brainstorming on Pricescope

Here goes again!

Your description brings to concepts in mind: (#1)placing stone in stone or (#2)suspending a faceted stone in tension with the metal arms tipped with transparent elements. No idea about the second (probably feasible, but rather by some facility makin custom lab equipment wher such design concepts may sound mainstream enough, not by a jeweler). If I could grasp correctly the general look of your project from the description...this does sound like the appropriate time to consider what would be the closest teachnically feasible thing. Not that completely new approaches are bad, but the cost of developing high tech stuff is the same in jewelry as anywhere.

This is a jewelry forum, I am not an engineer, so I am going to talk about what I know of #1 above. This has been done in jewelry, #2, to the best of my knowledge, has not.

The greatest challenge of your design will be how to lock-in two gem materials (diamond and something white and transparent, although glass is not what first comes to my mind as practical... there are plenty others, and colorless artificial corrundum comes close to the sapphires used by, say, the Torus cut).

Practicality aside, placing stone in stone ("glass") is not really new. While the visual effect is achieved by some jewelry objects, there is some departure from theory to practice, as usual. To the best of my knowledge, mounting stone in stone, literally, has only very rarely been done for jewelry purposes (the joining would most likely not be enduring enough for frequesnt wear) although it has for decorative objects (such as 3D intarsia) which do not have to suffer from usage.

There is a compromise: a small metal bezel "intermediated" between the stones. Since a well-cut diamond will not loose it's sparkle if placed in a full bezel, a small one would surely not impede light. Just for an illustration of the technique and concept, take a look at the Torus cut (example). One jewelry design firm makes it's entire collection around this idea, although the look they create seems different from what I immagine you are after.

I mentioned that intarsia artists did explore this territory, although diamonds have not been yet involved in the experiment, to the best of my knowledge. However, 3D intarsia is not often encountered . Arthur Lee Anderson is one of the few who furthered this technique and going through his webplace will produce a some examples of faceted stones set into stone carved bezels. If this can be done using diamond and a non-faceted transparent material as base, I can't think of a better place to address whatever your concerns and needs may be. I may imagine a few arguments for the contrary, but this is not my hobby...

Oh, and there are countless out-of-the blue designs, as below.

Surely there is more to say about the development of this fascinating idea... Hope more examples would follow the thread

 

[valeria101]

 

[valeria101]

 

[boonerings]

I have to agree with Lawgem on this one. You are not likely to get a tension set to work using materials like glass or silver. There are glasses that are flexible- to a point- beyond which it would shatter. It takes quite a bit more tension for these types of settings than ordinary glass or a glued glass/platinum interface could handle. There is also an issue with making a tension set with gold or platinum as well; there are only a couple places in the world licensed to do the patented heat treating process that makes those normally non-springy materials work in a tension set.