Knox Jewelers Journal
Engagement Ring Photos and the Importance of Real Photography
As we approach 6000 “real” photos of engagement rings and wedding bands, we’re reminded of all the work we’ve done in getting our designs on this very website. It’s important to understand that our quality and workmanship have to be top-notch when photographing at the macro level. Our jewelers and craftsmen must execute with the same passion as our designers. It takes years of experience across these many dedicated individuals to deliver a quality piece, something that a virtual image will never convey.
Sometimes we wish our photos could be produced by the touch of a button. It would be much easier to generate 6000 perfect computer renderings and not worry about capturing the countless hours of detail and passion put into our pieces. One slight problem, our customers don’t wear virtual rings.
Photograph taken of Caledonia Design - Unique Engagement Rings
The key to our business is heirloom quality unique engagement rings. The designing is only half of the battle. The craftsmanship yields the end product and is where we really shine as you can see in every one of our engagement ring photos. Our designs are handmade and given meticulously attention to in every detail. How would anyone be able to see our quality if our collection was all computer generated? The diamonds still have to be precisely set, the metal still has to be polished smooth, and the engraving still has to be cut by hand.
Our customers come to us because they want to cherish the beauty and art put into everyone of our designs. They don’t want the same design that has been made ten thousand times by an overworked, underpaid worker overseas. They want unique, they want one-of-a-kind, and they want heirloom quality.
Virtual jewelry only shows 50 percent of any given design. It’s a mere concept of how a design should look. The design still has to executed into a beautiful piece of art and that feat takes years of experience. Quality and craftsmanship come with no easy button.
Tags: craftsmanship, engagement ring photos, quality, render, virtual | Categories: Unique Custom Design Engagement Rings
Sapphire Engagement Rings
At Knox Jewelers, we have been creating more and more Sapphire Engagement Rings in many design styles, some of which are:
- Antique Style Sapphire Engagement Rings
- Contemporary Sapphire Engagement Rings
- Fancy Shape Sapphire Engagement Rings
- Solitaire Sapphire Engagement Rings
- Three Stone Sapphire Engagement Rings
- Custom Sapphire Engagement Rings
- Micro Pave Sapphire Engagement Rings
- Split Shank Sapphire Engagement Rings
- Hand Engraved Sapphire Engagement Rings
- Unique Sapphire Engagement Rings
Here are a few photos of rings we have made with links to the product page of the design.
Click on the images to go to the respective ring’s product page for additional photos and info.
This sapphire engagement ring features hand engraving and platinum filigree on a half bezel set design.
Purple Sapphire in Knox Seville Design
This sapphire engagement ring features a low set cushion cut yellow sapphire mounted around diamonds, hand engraving, and yellow gold filigree.
Yellow Cushion Sapphire in Knox Barcelona Design
Our bezel elegante design is shown with a bezel set sapphire engagement ring with a beautiful blue sapphire. This halo engagement ring style is featured throughout our website with different center stones; such as diamond, sapphire, and moissanite.
Blue Cushion Cut Sapphire in Knox Bezel Elegante Design
This custom engagement ring features a celtic knot pattern holding a rich blue sapphire.
Blue Oval Sapphire in Knox Custom Design Engagement Ring
More to come soon… please stop back.
Tags: sapphire engagement rings | Categories: Unique Custom Design Engagement Rings
Hand Engraved Ring Designs
Hand engraving on jewelry and other metal objects is a very specialized art form in and of itself and when skillfully placed on an already high quality ring, can make for an absolutely unique and heirloom quality piece of jewelry.
The actual engraving is done with an extremely sharp tool called a graver. The graver is used to carefully carve a pattern or design into the metal, leaving no room for error. The artisan that does the hand engraving will have various sizes, shapes, and angles of gravers that they use for different effects/designs. The cutting into the metal with the graver is often (but not always) facilitated by small hand held pneumatic devices that are essentially small pneumatic hammers.
What is Cast in Place engraving or CAD-CAM engraving?
It is important to differentiate between actual hand engraving and the much more commonly found cast in place engraving or CAD-CAM engraving in which a design or pattern is placed in the wax or prototype of the item being cast to give the look or effect of hand engraving.
Here are a few examples of cast in place engraving or CAD-CAM engraving.
Example #1 of cast in place ‘engraving’
Example #2 of cast in place ‘engraving’
Example #3 of cast in place ‘engraving’
Is it possible to tell the difference between hand engraving and cast in place engraving?
The quick answer is no, a novice may not always be able to tell the difference.
While even a novice may be able to tell the difference between extreme examples from both methods, (the example photos used here are classic examples of the representative methods) please note that there will be many examples from both methods that may be virtually indistinguishable from each other when looking at merely photos, especially to a novice.
That said, the predominant indication of cast in place/faux engraving will be a ’smoothed out’ or ‘polished down’ look to the detailing in the pattern as opposed to a much sharper or crisper pattern in hand engraved designs.
Here are a few examples of actual ‘Hand engraved’ designs. Notice the sharpness and crispness of the detailing in the patterns.
Example #1 of a hand engraved design
Example #2 of a hand engraved design
Example #3 of a hand engraved design
Example #4 of a hand engraved design
Example #5 of a hand engraved design
Please visit our web site here:
Tags: hand engraved, hand engraving, Unique | Categories: Jewelry, Unique Custom Design Engagement Rings
Custom making a wide Eternity Band.
The following is a little look behind the scenes in how a custom ring is made.
I will start by showing just a couple pics of the finished ring and then explain how the ring is made and show some of the steps in the process.
Here are two pics of the finished ring:
Now I will show and explain in a very condensed manner the process of making a ring like this.
Here is the ’screenshot’ from our 3-D design software showing the design from several different angles. A design like this can take many hours of design and engineering time.
After using a CAM technology to make a physical prototype and mold of the two separate elements used to make this ring, the three parts of the design are cast in 18 karat white gold. Here are a few pics of the raw castings:
We casted the design in three sections, the two outside rails and the inside pattern.
The overall finished width will be 15mm. Finger size 5.25
After cleaning up the raw castings ( removing sprues, smoothing, etc) the three sections are joined.
First we tacked the three sections together in a few different spots with a laser to hold the sections together, then we hard soldered them together with a torch to assure a very durable ring.
Here are a couple pics after we finished setting the diamonds in the two outside rails.
Here are a couple quick pics with the rest of the diamonds set.
There is No Short Cut to Quality
The work necessary to obtain an immaculate look on a design with this level of detail is a very time consuming task and as we are fond of saying at Knox Jewelers, “there is no shortcut to quality”.
A master level artisan must carefully bright cut and engrave all of the beautiful detail into the areas around the diamonds and finally apply the mil grain which gives the design a beautiful and finished look.
The diamond setting, engraving and mil-graining labor (not counting design work, prototyping, casting) for a ring with this level of detail will have approx 32 man hours of labor when finished.
We think of projects like this as a little work of art with our name on it.
Click Here to See Video of Finished Ring
Please Visit our website KnoxJewelers.biz
| Categories: Jewelry, Unique Custom Design Engagement Rings
A look behind the scenes of making a custom version of our “Passion” ring
I thought I would post a little look behind the scenes with a unique custom engagement ring in progress.
Our local customer wanted a custom version of our “Passion” design, shown below in the first four pics and video. It is a very unique ring design with channel set carre cut (square step cut) diamonds and round micro pave diamonds covering nearly every available area.? This unique engagement ring also features hand wrought filigree.
Video of Knox Jeweler’s Passion design
We needed to start from scratch as we needed the new ring to fit a 1.50 carat radiant cut diamond ( the original Passion design was designed for about a 3/4 carat asscher, princess cut or radiant cut)
Here are a few pphotos of the larger version of our ‘Passion” design in our 3-D software. This software provides the ultimate in “What You See is What You Get” technology as you will soon see later in this thread.
Notice the red areas on the under side of the shank and halo elements. These areas will become the sprues or inlet areas for the molten metal during the casting process.
Here are a few photos of the raw castings
Notice how many sprues ( the inflow areas for the molten metal) we built into the design to facilitate a complete casting in the casting process. This is a very important step in the manufacturing process. It allows for uniform filling of the model in the casting process, which makes for problem free castings with no porosity issues or problems that could detract from the durability and longevity of the finished ring.
The raw casting must be prepared for stone setting by filling off the sprues and generally cleaning up the lines of the mounting.
Here are a few more pics of the ring at about half way stage of completion.
The platinum filigree was added on the inside of the ring.
Approx 1/2 of the round diamonds are set
One channel of the Carre cuts are channel set.
Still a lot of work to go…
Although it does not look like it, the ring is actually 18 karat white gold, I know it looks yellow in the photos but the metal is not that yellow in real life.
I think it is a combination of the very off white color of 18KWG combined with less than optimal camera settings, lighting, etc.
Most of the starter holes in the casting will need to be opened up some more for the diamonds to fit correctly.
The little beads (prongs) that will hold each little round diamond have to be formed by hand. This is very time consuming to do at the quality level we want on these designs.? This type of setting is called pave or micropave.
Just the diamond setting labor (not counting design work, prototyping, casting) for a ring with this level of hand work will have approx 32 man hours of labor when finished.
After the diamonds have been set, the goldsmith will start to form borders around the diamonds (bright cutting) as well as preparing the intended areas of the ring design for milgraining.
Well done milgraining by hand is very time consuming as the diamond setter must first form a sharp ridge or rail (see red arrows in examples 1 & 2) around the area where the diamonds are set.
This cutting or forming of the ridge (or simply a border in some cases) is called bright-cutting, as the goldsmith uses a sharp tool (graver) to form a pointed ridge or rail that will later be worked or formed down into a beaded edge (mil-graining) using a mil-grain tool.
Look at the example in this earlier photo (beforebrightcutting) which shows the same side of the ring and you can see that the “rail” has not yet been formed.
As usual the trick to anything that is well done is in the preparation.
Finally, after all the diamonds are set and the borders around the diamond sections are carefully formed by hand (brightcut) and the bright-cutting of the rails for mil-graining are completed, the ring is meticulously polished and prepared for the final step in the process which is the mil-graining.
Here are the final pics and a video of the completed ring:
Here is the video of the finished ring:
Tags: antique, Asscher, carre, carre´, channel set, channel setting, Custom engagement ring, custom ring, design, filigree, micro pave, mil grain, mil graining, pave, ring, square baguette | Categories: Jewelry, Unique Custom Design Engagement Rings
