Reviving the Broken

Get that fresh jewellery feeling without the price tag.

Repair, resize or recondition your much loved pieces. From broken and worn, to looking good as new!

Here I'll show you two recent revivals.

First up, one of my All Seeing Eye rings, in need of some TLC. Followed by a Mexican style ring with turquoise inlay that was badly in need of a refresh.

All Seeing Eye Ring Repair

Max asked me to repair and re-polish his ring. He's worn it everyday for years and it was absolutely battered. The solder join needed redoing and the many dinks and scratches polishing out....

Left to right; Max's worn out ring ~ The section to be replaced ~ Me polishing it up good

How it looks after reconditioning ~ Max in Soho collecting his ring ~ Max's hand.

Due to the amount of wear, I decided to replace the back section.

This ensures longevity of the repair. Once the section was soldered into place, I sanded and polished the entire ring, re-carving any lost details.

When I met Max to drop his ring off, he was very pleased.

Commented how his other rings now need doing. I'll happily do that I said.

Join me in the workshop to see how the repair went>>>>

https://video.wixstatic.com/video/08f10a_f25389f2388941f6886111613418f716/720p/mp4/file.mp4

Turquoise Inlay Replacement

Jim from Brighton sent me three rings in total. For the sake of simplicity, let's concentrate on the one that needed the most work.

The ring below is a great design, a God head comprised of silver and copper. The area surrounding it however, was hanging on for dear life. Jim requested blue and green, as it originally had been.

First things first, was to remove the old resin and turquoise.

Then I went and bought some small but bright turquoise stones. Smashing them into smaller pieces always feels wrong to do, but the outcome is totally worth it.

Left to right; How Jim's ring looked when it arrived ~ Old inlay removed ~ Turquoise stones before smashing ~

Adding the new crushed turquoise into the recess ~ The set resin and stones ~ The finished ring

For full transparency, this took a few more days than expected. The resin needs to set for 24hrs. The first time I sanded it back, I discovered an air bubble that needed drilling out and resetting. Working with resin can be unpredictable sometimes. But's that's ok, Jim was happy to wait a little longer to get it done perfectly.

Join me in the workshop to see how it went>>>>

https://video.wixstatic.com/video/08f10a_11cc17b4b77049739e065b5f9d5c681e/720p/mp4/file.mp4

Jim's 3 rings after alterations

Now I'd wished I'd documented all these as some really interesting stuff happened.

Here's a warning that sometimes there's a surprise in store when trying to resize.

The first ring (round one) I covered in heat protecter gel and soldered without issue.

The second one however, bubbled and melted; it was never set with turquoise as previously thought, it was all resin. Very convincing imitation turquoise. Luckily, I always let my customers know the risks, especially with heat and 'stones'.

The silver setting was still intact so

I recitified the situation by filling the three recesses with real turquoise and fresh black resin.

Jim was pleased as punch for making his turquoise jewellery brand new again.

If you'd like to refresh jewellery, the cost of a repair ranges from £30- £80.

Reach out for a quote or for more services go HERE

Thanks for looking

Elfin

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