When buying jewelry you should also know the difference between good work done by a jeweler, and bad work done by a jeweler. This can affect you as a consumer when you have a stone set, when you have a repair done, or even when you just have a ring sized or a chain added.

Take a look at the difference in this piece before it was fixed.

Notice how the bezel around the colored stone (which happens to be an Alexandrite) is uneven. Also, the channel set diamonds are not all sitting at the same angle in the channel and some of them look dirty because the jeweler did not clean the piece completely. Also notice how the channel has grooves in it where the jeweler nicked the metal and did not fix it.

Now look at the same piece after it has been fixed by a jeweler who does very good work.

Look at how the bezel around the Alexandite is smooth and the diamonds are evenly spaced, clean, and all at the same angle. Also, the channel around the diamond is the same width all the way around.

These are all specific problems that could come up in this particular piece but it’s just one example of what can happen if you go to a jeweler you don’t trust and you don’t look over the piece before you take it.

I already have a great wax and casting guy in Arizona and I am not willing to sacrifice quality to use someone local, but I still needed a jeweler to finish all of my pieces.

I starting asking around where I was working at the time to get the names of some good jewelers in my area.  It was harder than I thought since mostly the name I got was the jeweler the company I worked for used, and that could have been a conflict of interest.  Luckily, one of my friends had worked for several other retail jewelers in Omaha and had a name of a different guy that she had used to do some ring sizings.

I went to see that last guy and their price list was fair and they said they could get the work done by the date I needed it so I left some castings and stones with them that I was putting together to hopefully sell pre-made.

Now if you look at my designs, you will notice that I love bezels.  Bezel setting is a type of setting where the metal goes all the way around a stone and is bent over the stone all the way around to secure it.  The castings I left had 3 bezels total and a lot of prong set stones.

I was very upset when I went back to pick up my pieces and the bezels were uneven thicknesses around the stones and the metal wasn’t smooth!  Also, my castings had been polished down to the point where one was so fragile I wasn’t comfortable selling it anyone or even wearing it myself!

It was a large disappointment to get back pieces that didn’t look good and really weren’t sale-able.  But at least I learned a lesson about giving someone work that you haven’t used before or even seen work from.

I have since gone to using the other name I kept getting and their work is flawless!