A Facelift

When we got engaged Roy gave me a ring that has been in his family for at least 100 years. It was made in Germany in the 1800's. His mom wears the wedding ring and Roy was given the engagement ring to give to his bride. I got to be the lucky lady.

The ring had been well worn and a lot of the engraving detail was gone but it was still a beautiful ring and I was very happy with it. I liked that it showed it's history and it reminded me that there were a lot of years of marriage behind it and if they could make it work, so could we.

Last winter I kept getting a little cut on the inside of my ring finger. I thought it was because my hands were so dry. I would not wear the ring while I was letting the cut heal and once it was all better, I put the ring back on. A few weeks later, another cut.

I didn't put it together until the day I was sitting in a meeting, playing with my ring and "pop". I look down and the ring broke - right in the middle of the detail just to side of the main cluster of diamonds.

I showed Roy that night and we decided to take it back to the jeweler who had worked on it before the wedding. I took it in while I was waiting for the boys to meet me for lunch. They quoted me $800. The guy wanted to re-size it (which it didn't need), he wanted to re-do all the prongs (which I wasn't sure it needed), and they would fix the break. So I asked him to please write down in detail what they were going to do. I left the ring. He called me the next week and said the price came down to $600 but still no detail as to what they were going to do.

I couldn't go immediately to get the ring so two days later, at lunch, I ran out to the store to fetch the ring. The guy remembered me and I told him I needed the ring back, we weren't ready to work on it right now. He said he thought they had already started. I was said they weren't authorized so no work should have been done. Please get my ring.

He went to the back and brought it out to me. He asked if I was going to bring it back to be worked on. I told him that was the plan.

I told my lunch buddies my predicament and they told me about a jeweler who works out of the Tower Life Building, which is next door to our office. I called him and he told me to come on over.

He spent about 45 minutes talking to me about the ring and looking at with the loop. I told him what the other guy had said and how I wasn't comfortable with them not writing down what was going to be done. He also said there was a quick test to see if the ring was platinum or white gold and within a few minutes (he had to pull out a liquid from his test kit and explain to me what he was going to do) he told me it was indeed platinum with a white gold shank.

He said if he could work on it, he would revert back to the platinum because over time the white gold wears differently and on top of that it reduces the value of the ring. He quoted me a much more reasonable price to switch the shank back to platinum (no re-sizing needed) and mend the break. In the process, he noticed that the other side was starting with a crack and he didn't see any prongs that needed work.

He told me the break would be repaired using a laser. The laser was so precise that you would never be able to tell it was broken. I was very happy about that. I didn't want to loose what detail was still left in the ring.

So I talked to Roy and he said if I was comfortable with this guy, then I could take my ring to him. So I did. I won't tell you he was fast - but he was thorough - so it was worth it. He took great care and did research on rings from the time when this one was made to make sure he was doing what was right.

I went to try it on last week and the shank was much thicker and heavier than the previous one. I liked how it felt. He said it was in keeping what would have originally been on the ring. Then he said he would like to have an engraver work define the detail back into the ring and bring the detail all the around the shank. He showed me a few photos of new rings designed to look old that had the engraving pulled around the shank. They were really pretty. However, I was a little concerned about how it would look on my ring. I told him to talk to the engraver then let me know what they were going to do. He called me late last week and said the engraver wanted to pull the design around and he was excited to work on it. So I said go for it.

I was out of the office yesterday due to my back being out of service so I missed the call in the afternoon that the ring was ready. I went over this afternoon to fetch it. He had it wrapped in tissue paper and handed it to me with a funny look on his face. I asked him if he was happy with it. He said it didn't matter what he thought, what did I think.

I have to tell you that I love it. The ring before was beautiful but seeing the engraving back in it just makes it even prettier.

Unfortunately, I do not have any before photos to share but I will tell you that the engraving on the front of the ring was worn down to almost nothing and the back of the ring had been a thin plain shank.  This is what I left with today.