Buying a Silver Ring? Order it in Your Ring Size.
It is not an easy thing to do to have a Silver Ring sized according to Norman Monteau the President and Chief Laboratory Research Officer, for Los Angeles Jewelry Appraiser aiglabs.com. Silver Rings today are predominantly manufactured in China so says Sande Monteaux also of aiglabs.com They are made up of a layer of Silver, a layer of Nickel and a layer of Rhodium. The procedure to size a Silver Ring is listed below. After you read the procedure I'm sure that you will understand that you should always buy Silver Rings in the size that you need. Not every jeweler can size a Silver Ring. And I gotta say that most jewelers don't want to do it at all.
This article can be found in benchmagazine.com
Sizing large silver rings with heat sensitive stones is difficult to do with a torch. You need to protect the stone from the heat of the torch, and keep the heat from dissipating through the silver away from the solder seam. An easy method to do this is to place a metal water cup filled with water on your solder pad. Then, support the jewelry with the stones submerged in the water with the place to solder as far out of the water as possible. To make a water cup, cut the bottom 1” off a soft drink can. This works particularly well, as the aluminum does not rust as other metal containers will. Fill the water cup ¾ full of fine white sand and cover with water. Then, the jewelry you are soldering can easily be held in place by sticking the stone into the sand. The cool water will protect the stone and the sand will hold the ring in position for you to solder. Next, you need to deal with heat dissipation. The water will draw heat off the ring, as if silver was not bad enough on its own. To help the situation, place a small piece of firebrick or cutoff from a ceramic soldering pad through the finger hole of the ring. A piece 12mm X 5mm X 30 mm works well. The fire brick blocks the flame from the water helping to keep it cooler and it helps protect the stone. But more importantly it reflects the heat of the flame back up to the ring shank helping the solder to flow. Makes sizing large silver rings MUCH easier.
