Sapphire Engagement Rings

At Knox Jewelers, we have been creating more and more Sapphire Engagement Rings in many design styles.

Corundum, the stone that is commonly called sapphire, comes in every color of the rainbow except red, as red Corundum is called Ruby. There is also a white sapphire that when well cut, can look very much like a diamond.

Here are a few photos of some very unique sapphire engagement rings we have made. We can build these designs around any shape or size sapphire or diamond. So follow the links or click on the photos if you’re interested in more info.

Blue Sapphire Engagement Rings

Here is a custom version of our “Caledonia” design with a remarkable 3.60 carat blue cushion cut sapphire.

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Blue Cushion Cut Sapphire in Knox Heirloom Band (Caledonia)

Check this link to see other versions of our “Caledonia” Knox Heirloom Band. – Caledonia Custom Designs

Here is one of many of our “Cushion Barcelona” engagement ring designs. This is shown with a blue cushion cut sapphire. The hand done filigree and hand engraving make this design truly unique.

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Here is a link to other versions of our Barcelona engagement ring. – Barcelona Engagement Rings


Our “Bezel Elegante” design is shown here with a beautiful bezel set, blue princess cut sapphire.

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Check this link to see other versions of our “Elegante” engagement ring. –Elegante Engagement Ring Designs


Here is a very classic design with a blue emerald cut sapphire, beautifully accented by two tapered baguette shaped diamonds. Notice the elegant claw prongs holding both the side baguettes and the center sapphire.

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Here is an Emerald cut blue sapphire in our “Art Deco” engagement ring.

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Emerald Cut Blue Sapphire Art Deco Engagement Ring
Check this link to see other Art Deco designs on our website. – Art Deco designs

Here is a Bezel Set Emerald cut blue sapphire engagement ring with hand done filigree.

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Bezel Set Emerald cut blue sapphire engagement ring with filigree.
Here is our “Seville” design with a rich blue diamond cut sapphire. This is a very unique engagement ring with the hand engraving and hand done filigree accent.
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Purple Sapphire Engagement Rings

This purple sapphire engagement ring features our “Seville” design again, with hand engraving and hand made platinum filigree.

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Purple Sapphire in Knox Seville Design

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Here is a link to all of versions of our “Seville” design throughout the website. – Seville Engagement Rings

Here is a recent three stone engagement ring design with a purple sapphire. The design features a near eternity diamond band and also beautiful hand engraving.

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Three Stone Engagement Ring Design with a purple sapphire.

Here is our “Lotus” halo style engagement ring, shown with a bright purple sapphire.

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Lotus Halo Engagement Ring with Purple Sapphire

Yellow Sapphire Engagement Rings

This sapphire engagement ring features a low set cushion cut yellow sapphire mounted around diamonds, hand engraving, and yellow gold filigree. This is a custom version of our “Cushion Barcelona” engagement ring.

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Here is a link to other versions of our Barcelona engagement ring. – Barcelona Engagement Rings

Here are two custom versions of our “Fireworks” engagement ring with yellow sapphires.

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Yellow Princess Cut Sapphire in a very unique engagement ring

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Yellow Round Cut Sapphire in a very unique micro pave engagement ring

Green Sapphire Engagement Rings

Here is a fabulous green cushion cut sapphire engagement ring. The sapphire is surrounded by a halo of diamonds. The hand engraving and hand done filigree are what make this unique engagement ring a work of art.

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Another beautiful green sapphire engagement ring. This is a version of our “Amante” halo design, customized with hand done filigree filling the gallery.

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Orange Sapphire Engagement Rings

Stunning orange sapphire engagement ring. Based off of our “Contour Trellis” three stone engagement ring.

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Stunning orange sapphire engagement ring

Here is a custom version of our “Cushion Barcelona” design with an vivid orange square cushion cut sapphire.

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Orange Square Cushion Cut Sapphire in Custom Cushion Barcelona Engagement Ring. Hand Engraved with Filigree.

Here is a link to other versions of our Barcelona engagement ring. – Barcelona Engagement Rings

Pink Sapphire Engagement Rings

Here is a beautiful 1.84 carat cushion cut pink sapphire engagement ring in a micro pave style.

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1.84 carat cushion cut pink sapphire engagement ring

Check this link to see other versions of our “Adriana Sophia” ring. – Adriana Sophia designs

Here is a Pink Cushion Cut Sapphire in a split shank micro pave engagement ring.

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Another Pink Cushion Cut Sapphire in a split shank micro pave engagement ring

Check this link to see other versions of our Cielo design. – Cielo Engagement Rings

Hand Engraved Engagement Ring Designs

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Knox 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.

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Example #1 of cast in place ‘engraving’

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Example #2 of cast in place ‘engraving’

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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 engagement rings. Notice the sharpness and crispness of the detailing in the patterns.

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Example #1 of a hand engraved engagement ring design

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Example #2 of a hand engraved engagement ring design

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Example #3 of a hand engraved engagement ring design

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Example #4 of a hand engraved engagement ring design

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Example #5 of a hand engraved engagement ring design

Unique Engagement Ring Styles – Filigree

Filigree Engagement Rings

What exactly is filigree?

Filigree is fine and delicate ornamental work done in platinum or gold wire.

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Filigree can be located on the shank or crown portion of the ring. It can be used as a main, accent, or complementary design element. By definition, filigree is wire work done by hand.While it’s very common to see mass produced pieces with cast in place filigree, only true hand wrought wire can be considered as such. Hand curled filigree is an extremely skilled and tedious task as the wire used is often under half of a millimeter or the thickness of 3-4 pieces of paper. It takes a steady hand in welding wire to a ring and is often done under a 10X microscope to ensure proper contact and alignment.

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The design pictured above uses filigree to hold several very light blue ceylon sapphires.

Click here to see our selection of filigree engagement rings.

Can a diamond become discolored from well water?

I see and hear of this occasionally, it even happened to me once when we cleaned a 1.00 ct F color Princess cut with the last few rusty bursts of dirty steam from an aging steam cleaner.

The F color diamond suddenly looked like a J/K color with no obvious dirt or minerals showing on the diamond.

My theory is that the iron (rust) has an affinity for the diamond and sticks to the surface and/or in the hollowed out area of the prongs that are designed to protect the corner of the princess cut diamond. With even a trace of dirt or minerals contacting the princess cut diamond, the diamond will look noticeably tinted.

Here is what I do to remedy this problem, I use alternating baths in a pickle solution (heated acid bath) and heated ultrasonic along with a steam cleaner to help steam out any particles etc. This process takes patience, as it takes much more time and repeated cycles of the process than an ordinary cleaning.

As a home solution, you could maybe try some more soaking in vinegar or even a CLR (calcium,lime rust) type cleaner as long as it does not have any chlorine in it (bad for gold)

Custom making a wide Eternity Band.

The following is a look behind the scenes of how a custom ring is made.

I will start by showing a picture of the finished ring and then explain how the ring is made and show some of the steps in the process.

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Knox Jewelers Caledonia Design

 

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.

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Screen shot from Knox Jewelers 3D design software

After using a CAM technology to make a physical prototype and mold used to make this ring,  the design are cast in 18 karat white gold. Here is a picture of the raw castings:

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Raw Ring Casting

The design has 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 ready to finish.

Here are a couple pics after we finished setting the diamonds in the two outside rails.

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Assembled ring with diamonds set in the rails
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Assembled ring with diamonds set in the rails

 

Here are a couple quick pics with the rest of the diamonds set.

 

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Assembled ring with diamonds set in the rails and center section
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Assembled ring with diamonds set in the rails and center section


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 milgrain which gives the design a beautiful and finished look.

The diamond setting, engraving and milgraining 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 miniature work of art with our name on it.

Click Here to See the product page of the Finished Ring and Hi-Def Video

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