18 February 2015
For the past thirty years I have listened to Customers saying “oh I wouldn’t like to leave my diamond ring into a jeweller as I would be afraid that they would change my diamond and that happened to a friend of mine, she never got back the same diamond again”. Well let me begin by saying you could not understand just how difficult it is to change a diamond. People who do not make jewellery think it is so easy to swap or switch stones in like two seconds. As someone who makes jewellery I can tell you that it is not easy to swap or switch diamonds. The setting of a ring or piece of jewellery has been drilled to accommodate the stone or diamond that it is going to go into the piece. That means taking into account the size of the girdle, thickness of girdle, thickness of claws, type of setting and many other things about the stone. The idea being that the claws or setting will only need to be pushed over once and that the stone or diamond will be in the setting for an eternity. Now once these claws are pushed over once on the stone or diamond it is very difficult to force them backwards to take out a diamond and then to reset another stone and to push the claws over again without breaking one of them. It is a big job to have to remake one or two claws for a setting.
The second problem is that one would have to find another diamond or stone that had almost the exact same measurements as the original stone in order for the second stone to sit in successfully to the original setting which had already been drilled out for the first diamond. This again is not an easy task to find an almost identical size diamond with the same measurements and same girdle thickness as the original diamond. Now it is not an impossible task but personally unless the diamond that is being removed was of spectacular colour and quality and was being replaced with a diamond of a much lower colour or clarity then I cannot see why any jeweller would go to the bother of doing this. Bearing in mind that he/she may have to replace all the claws too, which is a very messy job to perform. Now every trade has its share of crooks and the jewellery trade in not so different but, I believe that it is up to the Customer to know their own diamond as best they can. It never ceases to amaze me the amount of people who have never even looked at their own diamond with a 10x lens or even a magnifying glass from the day the purchased the ring. Younger people are educated quite a lot about diamonds and diamond certificates however, I find that most young people have never looked at their diamond although they seem to know a lot about percentages of tables and fluorescence etc.
Today, many certified diamonds are laser inscribed, that means that they have the same number lasered on to the side of the diamond as the number on the certificate so it is usually very easy to identify one’s own diamond. However, if you have an old diamond then it is up to you to get to know your own diamond. Unless a diamond is very clear like IF (internally flawless) or VVS (very very slightly included) then it will have some marks in or on it that you should get to know. If I am taking anyone’s diamond in for cleaning etc., I plot or map the diamond on a drawing for the Customer and I make sure they see everything that I see before they leave my shop. They then receive a copy of the plot or map and I have a copy too and then they can compare the plot with the diamond when I am finished cleaning the ring. If every Jeweller did this I am very sure it would stop this idea that all jewellers change Customers’ diamonds. So if you are leaving your diamond ring in to be cleaned or repaired then make sure the Jeweller plots your diamond for you and you understand this plot fully before you leave the premises. Your Jeweller should also give you exact measurements of your diamond too. If you have a certified diamond you should give the Jeweller a copy of it and keep the original cert yourself.
