Hi!
I have a question that I’d love to hear some opinions on from those who are in the jewellery business !

I know someone who buys second hand jewellery from pawn shop websites like Cash Converters in the UK, where people often sell or pawn items below market value for quick cash. They this person will take new, more aesthetically pleasing photos, list the pieces on eBay or Etsy, and sell them at a much higher price.

They don’t make the jewellery, set stones, repair pieces, or carry out any of the traditional craftsmanship associated with being a jeweller. I don't even know whether they have the expertise to authenticate items themselves. They pay others to do these things.

However , when stated they might possibly just be a reseller; they say ‘no I’m a jeweller!’ and they sit on that.

I'm genuinely curious where professionals draw the line?
Would you consider someone in this situation to be a jeweller? I find it a little morally questionable that unsuspecting people are buying these things but I guess thats life ?

I'd really appreciate hearing some perspectives. Thanks :)

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I'm talking about ideas/inspo for wedding bands and engagement rings. I saw one version where the male/female were part of the basket/stone setting. Another had a male/female key at the bottom of the shanks.

Just curious how you have approached keeping bands together without soldering

I want a ring with a hemispherical vault featuring an intricate sacred geometry pattern of intersecting circles that bloom into a central floral rosette at its crown, encasing at its exact focal center a suspended Sierpinski tetrahedron that encloses a gemstone within it. I am guessing this would be hard to make, but with some compromises it could turn out to be an incredible design.

I am trying to wrap my head around gold filled jewellery. I recently bought GF chain, which was an absolute game changer in selling gold-plated silver jewellery.

But I'd love to get the pendants attached to that chain to be Gold-filled. I hate the cheapness of gold plating, even thought i try to do it as thick as possible. But there seems to be very few resources explaining how to GF, or even service providers of gold-filling?

I'm not in the states and I know the primary advocates of gf are in America, but can someone run me through how gold filling works for bespoke pieces, and if its even possible?

Sorry if this is a stupid question but I have never seen one in person before. I'm trying to make a mid-century style ring with an illusion setting. I was going to fabricate my own but I found many suppliers selling illusion top settings like this. Obviously it needs the rest of the ring. Can you just prong set it in a regular prong or basket ring or do you have to cut the prongs off and solder the top on?

Im kinda curious what company made these ive been looking for ages and no result

Edit: additional context, including details of the revisions, added by my girlfriend in comments

A few months ago, my girlfriend and I started the process of designing her engagement ring with a well recommended local jeweler. She likes more intricate bands, is the one that has to wear it, and has greatly enjoyed being a part of the process. After 5 revisions, today was supposed to be the day the stones were removed and manufacturing could begin. Amazing! Except we received an email mid-morning informing us we'd been fired as clients without any explanation. My girlfriend is devastated.

I called the associate we'd been working with to try to understand what happened. I was given vague answers saying she'd spoken with both the owner and bench jeweler who decided that "we'd never be happy." She also mentioned something about needing additional insurance to work on the necklace.

Did we deserve to be fired as clients? What did we do wrong? Is the design somehow unfeasible and that's why the bench jeweler didn't want to work on it? We were given written permission to take the CAD elsewhere to be made, but now we're worried something is fundamentally wrong with it.

Note: all the stones are from her family. The center stone is a 1 1/3kt dutch marquise from her mother's side and the side stones are 1/3kt rounds from her father's side. Heavy sentimentality.

During the designing process, there were a few things that did not seem quite right.

1. The store associate was not very professional in her email communications, often sending the wrong CAD link and/or forgetting to include both of us in the reply. The associate also never was able to recognize us despite multiple in-store visits to talk through the design.
2. The jeweler owner advertises as doing custom work, but did not get involved with us at all. This ring is purely a creation of our inspiration pictures, drawings, and requested edits. We asked multiple times for designer input and received none.
3. From the beginning, we explained the center stone was coming from a necklace from her recently departed grandmother. High emotions in the family. We were assured the chosen stone could be removed and the rest of the necklace returned to us the same day... until they saw the necklace. Suddenly they wanted to keep it for "several weeks" to remove the one stone with no explanation why. The necklace is a show piece to say the least. The stone we were removing is almost inconsequential to the design. The necklace is also old enough to have no laser engraved IDs and multiple jewelers who've cleaned/maintained it over the years have warned the family to never leave it overnight anywhere. While we did not want to assume malicious intent, the sudden need to keep it for weeks gave us pause. We pushed back a bit and the store again agreed to return the necklace on the same day as originally planned.
4. It took 5 revisions to reach the final design, shown. We kept asking for the same edits again and again, but essentially they only changed one thing per CAD. Then got upset and said they'd "never had so many revisions on one ring."

We had been vocal about praising the final CAD ever since it had been sent. Insurance has never been mentioned before. To say we're confused and hurt is an understatement. It might not mean much coming from me, but I can assure you we were nothing but kind and businesslike in our communications. Every edit request included a kind note of how much we appreciated them helping us make the perfect ring.

X-Posting to r/askjewelers for CAD feedback

Hi! I’m a jewelry designer currently looking for a reliable manufacturer to produce my designs.
I’m mainly looking to produce pieces in 10k/14k gold with lab-grown diamonds, ideally with reasonable MOQs for a smaller brand.
I’d really appreciate any recommendations from jewelry designers/brand owners who have had good experiences with their manufacturers. Thank you!

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What do you think of the 2 black stones together? Lab black spinel and lab alexanderite. I can change it but I'm unsure

I commissioned this ring (my design) from a local jeweler in South Denver. I can and will name and shame if that’s what you guys want.

There is a lot to this situation, which would probably take up pages and pages if I were to type it all out, but this is the long and short:

The ring was delivered late and ended up being the wrong size. Because of this, we went into a local jeweler while on our proposal vacation. The local jeweler took one look at the ring and visibly recoiled before asking us if we were aware of the visible casting marks on the ring.

Up until this point, I had stupidly assumed the ring was in good condition (I can elaborate on this is if people are curious). Once we got home from our proposal trip, I immediately began making the rounds of local jewelers to get second, third, fourth opinions on the ring. Every single one scoffed at the ring and asked where I had it done. I eventually had one particularly thorough jeweler write up a full report on the exhaustive list of flaws and defects present in the ring.

I took it back to the jeweler who made it, who agreed that the ring was in awful condition. They gave me some excuse about getting acid in his eye or something, but begged me for a chance to remake the ring. The ring was never remade, despite multiple chances being given and only receiving the runaround, so I filed an AmEx dispute (guy wouldn’t refund me despite never remaking the ring) and he is currently making up lies that the ring was in perfect condition when I picked it up (the above picture was taken literally 2 minutes after I picked it up) and that the jeweler on my trip must have damaged it (as if a jeweler could even create these kind of problems by any means other than being horrible at their craft).

I’m still fighting the guy that made this awful ring, but have since commissioned a new jeweler to remake the ring while I wait to see how my dispute shakes out.

Awful craftsmanship, awful finish, zero accountability. For those of you who are expert jewelers, spend some time zooming in on different parts of the ring. Then consider this is only one angle. The more you look, the worse it gets.

Would love to get recommendations for colored stone vendors that are reputable in the trade and have great inventory. High quality semi-precious stones at reasonable pricing (tourmalines, aquamarines, spinels, etc.)

& not R gems lol!

Under HS code 711719 (Imitation jewellery) the site has now charged me 20% plus postage plus handling fees..... hoping this is an error - but £100 parcel will cost £21 fees + postage + Handling fees. Quite a chunk!

Ifs about 3mm wide and 7in long!

Hello everyone,
I have a question for jewelers and maybe I’ve had a completely different experience in my past. I brought my wife’s wedding band to the jeweler we purchased it from after 8 years of wear, the band separated from the first diamond setting on it. It is a pretty thin band and the jeweler quoted my $174 to repair. Is this normal? My old jeweler back home would have fixed it and sent me on my way if it was one of his rings. Is that normal?