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Engagement Ring Care & Maintenance

Six Month Check-ups

We recommend that you bring your jewelry in for inspection at least twice a year. At this time, we will look for abnormal wear and tear, stone tightness and integrity, and the strength and size of prongs and stone-settings. We may recommend necessary repairs.

Cleaning

Diamond rings should be cleaned regularly. Oils in shampoos, soaps, lotions, and fingerprints bond to the surface of your diamonds rendering them less brilliant. There are many jewelry cleaners designed for at home use, ranging from ‘jar and brush’ cleaners to small sonic cleaners to even small steam cleaners. Jewelers with full service shops like us will have industrial strength heated ultrasonic cleaners as well as steam cleaners that will professionally clean a jewelry item better than any home cleaning system. We welcome anyone to stop in as jewelry cleaning is free. Please note, we may not be able to clean jewelry bought elsewhere as our machines may loosen or knock out weakly set diamonds or gemstones.

Polishing

Polishing is the process of removing small scratches and restoring a smooth shiny surface to a ring. This is obtained by using a high speed polishing wheel with various polishing compounds. In some situations it may be necessary to use some preparatory abrasives such as emery paper or a file. Whenever a ring is polished, a small amount of metal is lost. Normally we will recommend a “rouge” polishing, rouge is the least aggressive of the polishing compounds and will return the metal surface to a like new shine. While a rouge polish will not remove deep scratches, it is usually advisable to ignore the deep scratches as removing these means removing metal to the depth of the deep scratch which will drastically shorten the lifetime of a ring.

Rhodium Plating

Rhodium plating or re-dipping should be done every six months on white gold rings. A thorough cleaning and polish is required before re-plating.

Resizing

Finger sizes can change throughout the seasons, during different times of the day, after eating salty foods or drinking liquor, and during pregnancy. Since multiple ring resizings are not practical or conducive to the longetivity of your ring, we recommend finding a "happy medium" finger size that suits you best.

Learn more about finger sizing here.

Avoid Heavy Lifting and Stress

While the metals and gemstone used in your ring are undoubtedly very strong and hard, they are not indestructible. Wearing your rings while lifting weights or heavy objects may result in damage and will void your warranty. It's wise to take off your rings while doing household chores or playing sports as well (especially softball, golf, and tennis).

Wearing While in Water

The most common way to lose a valuable ring is wearing it while in water. Water not only acts as natural lubricant making it easier for your ring to slide on and off, but it will also cause you fingers to shrink given the colder temperature. Both of these reasons make it a wise choice to take your rings off before entering the lake or ocean.

Dangers of Chlorine

Gold and diamond rings should not be worn in any environment that contains chlorine. The problem with chlorine is the reaction with the alloy metals used in the various gold alloys, especially white gold. The chlorine chemically breaks down the alloy metals, leading to corrosion and brittleness. This in turn leads to the breakdown and failure of prongs, crowns, solders, and welds. Platinum rings are not susceptible to these reactions with chlorine. However, it is better to be safe than sorry because even in some platinum rings jewelers will use a gold solder to hold crowns, etc. Our advice is to not wear any diamond rings in Chlorine.

Traveling

We recommend leaving your bridal jewelry at home when traveling.