I fixed rings that GOT STUCK during pregnancy!

oh the joys of pregnancy especially in the third trimester when your fingers swell up the ring gets stuck on your finger and you have to have it cut off the ring gets all bent out of shape comes apart and is pretty much unwearable for the foreseeable future this is just one of the many side effects that come from literally growing another human being inside of your body the bands in this Bridal set are supposed to be straight but if you see here it's all wavy I'm gonna straighten these bands but first I need to clean the ring at one point these two rings were soldered together my client would like to have them separated to be two rings again in order to do that I need to find the original solder points I checked the side nothing there another common spot is underneath at the top again no solder the only place where the solder remains is here on the side you can see it between the two rings holding them together now it's time to separate these two rings I do this by slowly heating up the area with the existing solder when it begins to flow I can pull these rings apart now that the rings are separated they're gonna be a lot easier to work with the first thing I'm going to do is focus on the shape of the Rings right now they're all spread out and they still have that wave shape in them it's not even close to laying flat in order to straighten out these rings I first want to make them around again I'll take my soft ring bending pliers and start to pull down I focus the majority of my bending on the bottom third of the ring this is the area that is solid 14 karat white gold without any diamonds [Music] in order to create a tighter seam I'll take my jewelers saw and I'll run the blade through the scene well then take the ring and I'll solder it closed by flowing solder into the seam afterwards I'll take a cylinder burr and I'll run it on the inside of the Ring this will make it nice and smooth for rounding naturally the ring is very much an oval shape due to me bending down the sides in order to round it out I'll throw it on a ring mandrel and start to work it down the mandrel after it feels pretty tight on the mandrel I'll grab my rawhide mallet and start to pound away as I'm pounding on the ring I try to avoid the spots where the diamonds are set I'll continue to hammer the ring while pulling down with my left hand simultaneously I'll keep going until the ring is virtually rounded out once the ring is round I'll focus on straightening it this is done by placing the ring on a metal block taking my metal hammer and tapping it I'll keep hammering down until there's no more gap between the metal block and the ring itself this is the point in the project where you're finally starting to see some success the ring looks like a ring again all that being said there's still a few very important steps to complete we now need to address the finger size the sabrine hasn't been worn in over two years the original ring size is reading at four and a half but my client would now like it to be a size five so let's just jump on into sizing this ring accepts I forgot there's another ring this one's going to need to get caught up as well so with the engagement ring we're gonna do basically the exact same thing we did with the wedding band I can practically hear you guys begging to see all of these same steps performed over again but for the sake of time let's go ahead and fast forward things a little bit we'll start by bending it down filing more bending down soldering the ring together throwing it on a mandrel more hammering checking the roundness now everybody wake up because there's some diamonds missing what exactly happened here well with all the bending down rounding out the diamonds will inevitably become loose but worry not about the missing diamonds they simply fell down into my bench pan I'll collect them and reset them shortly so now we have two rings that have been rounded out and soldered back together they've also been straightened so what comes next you might remember we need to size both of these rings up to a size five I'll take my jewelers saw and run the blade right through the original seam [Music] using my ring mandrel as a sizing gauge I'll slide the ring up to the size I need in this case size five in order to sizer enlarger I'll have to add some gold to the ring in this case I'll be using a piece of sizing stock 2 by 2 millimeters I'll slide that piece of gold right above and parallel to the ring I'll then take some tweezers and score the lengths I need to cut then I'll clamp down the piece of sizing stock and then use my jewelers saw to cut that piece exactly where I scored it I don't want the small piece to go shooting across the room when I cut through so I'll clamp it down and then wiggle the big piece free for good measure I'll run my file over the piece to make sure the seam is nice and tight I'll then take the new piece of gold and drop it down into the existing ring literally bridging that gap you want to make sure there's no added tension in the ring when you do this now we're gonna solder the ring together I'll first add some flux down into the seams this aids the soldering process it helps the solder flow all the way through and where it needs to go after I've sized the first ring I'll move on to the second ring sizing has become sort of robotic for me these days I've sized a lot of rings in my life according to this Instagram post I sized 1363 rings in 2016 and while I'm super grateful for those years of sizing thousands of rings I'm certainly grateful I don't have to do it anymore I started modern Goldsmith as a way to more express myself artistically my main focus these days is custom work and I also love making videos like this if you enjoy what I do consider subscribing unless of course you'd rather have me go back to sizing rings for a living in that case you can leave but seriously don't leave stay jumping back into the task at hand I'm using the cylinder burr again to smooth out the inside of the Rings the new piece of gold that was soldered in will need to be blended with the original ring I'll do this by using my file the trick to filing is to follow the contour of the ring almost like you're following through as well you don't want to create a flat spot on the ring after filing I like to use these sanding wheels to blend everything together more smoothly now it's time to transform the bench a little bit by removing the bench pin this will be replaced by my stone setting table sitting on the table is this vice I'll use this to keep the ring in place I use it for stone setting or placing stones tightening stones pretty much anytime I need to keep a ring tight and secure while I work on it with the ring secure I'll be replacing the diamonds that fell out after the stone is dropped in I'll try to straighten it the best I can I'll then take my beading tool and I play pressure to the diamond I want to do this so I can pop the diamond back into place I'll do the same thing with the second diamond and any other diamond that needs to be replaced I'll drop it down into the seat straighten it and then use pressure to pop it back into place this is a beading tool it is used to push the prongs down over the diamonds the metal tips on these beading tools are all interchangeable basically you want to find the size that fits perfectly for the ring you want your beading tool to cup just over those tips then using pressure I push down the staight nning the diamonds I'll go over each individual prong or tip one by one pushing the gold down until the stone is tight due to how much I had to round this ring out virtually every stone is loose in some capacity after I go over each individual tip I'll take some tweezers and I'll test the tightness of the stones if I find any that are still a little bit loose I'll go back with my bead tool and tighten it down some more I'm also going to inspect the center diamond as we can see the six prongs are asymmetrical they're gonna need to be straightened I also want to make sure that the center stone is tight [Music] round diamonds are pretty hard to break that being said you never want to rush this step you want to take your time make sure that you're not putting too much pressure on the center diamond [Music] and of course I didn't forget to tighten down all the diamonds in the other ring [Music] almost done to recap we bent the rings back into shape soldered them back together size them up and then we also tighten down all the stones and replace the ones that fell out if you've made it this far in the video I'm going to buy you a basket of fries of the day and while the repair is 95% done I truly believe that it is the last 5 percent that makes the most difference of course I'm talking about polishing finishing putting the final shine on a ring it starts with a lap this restores the nice crisp edges on the sides of the ring I then move over to inside ring polishing some people in the industry call this a polishing finger it's basically used to make the inside of the ring super smooth I then remove the lap and replace it with this polishing brush the brush does a really good job at polishing up those places that are hard to reach especially down near the base of the head [Music] to cap off the polishing process I use this fine final wheel I'll add some polishing Rouge and then run the ring through the wheel at all different angles and directions this wheel is soft enough to run it right over the prongs you don't want a wheel that's too hard because you don't want to wear the gold down this wheel does a perfect job of brightening up the entire ring [Music] I'm not gonna lie I love getting my hands dirty this means the projects almost done and you can really see how beautiful everything is it's so incredibly satisfying to see the fruition of your hard work but I digress we still have more to do obviously we're going to need to clean that Rouge off the Rings so I drop it in my ultrasonic cleaner after it's run for some minutes it's time to steam the Rings last but not least is rhodium plating I seriously promise this is the last step [Music] this is an electroplating process basically what we're doing here is we're electroplating rhodium on top of the white gold ring many traditional white gold alloys will start to yellow after a while rhodium is great because it creates an extra white barrier on the surface of the Ring and there you have it two completely restored rings the engagement ring and the wedding band separated sized larger the stones tightened everything polished up and rhodium plated I'm so excited for this mother to get her rings back after two years of not wearing these rings they're finally gonna be back where they belong this is officially the longest video I've ever made and if you stuck with me this whole time I thank you you might be able to tell I've lost my voice so excuse me while I go get some tea with honey [Music] 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Channel: Modern Goldsmith

Views: 1,524,996

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Id: uOKQ41P4DYQ

Length: 15min 57sec (957 seconds)

Published: Fri Feb 21 2020