Sapphire and diamonds reinvented

We love remodelling at PIKE.

This remodelling commission involved Nicholas reinventing an oval blue sapphire and some diamonds of varying sizes:

Nicholas considered all of the stones and designed a beautiful pink and white gold crossover ring that featured the sapphire, and some of the diamonds:

The process started with Matthew melting pink and white gold, ready to make the ring bands and settings, and rolling the metals out with the rolling mill:

Matthew then bent some white gold by hand to make the setting for the sapphire:

Once shaped, he soldered the setting together using a breath-blown torch:

Once the sapphire bezel was complete, Matthew began bending pink gold and white gold for the two bands of the crossover design, and soldering them together:

Once the bands were soldered together, Matthew carefully hammered the bands up to the correct finger size – the centre piece of gold you can see here is to keep the shape during the process:

Once at the correct finger size, Matthew carefully started to refine the pink and white gold bands with a file, and removed the band support:

The next step in this commission was to make the diamond settings:

In preparation to solder the settings into the band, Matthew polished the two-tone band, and then soldered the central sapphire into the band:

Matthew then started filing the claws into the diamond settings, in preparation to set the diamonds, and then soldered the settings into the band:

After soldering the settings in, Matthew took great care to finish the inside of the ring by carefully filing off any rough spots:

And then the ring was ready to set:

Once the sapphire and diamonds were set, Matthew carefully polished all of the surfaces of the ring with ‘stringing’, hand polishing and machine polishing:

The final process of the ring included masking the pink gold sections of the ring with nail polish to prevent the rhodium plating from covering it, and then following the plating process to make the white gold as white and bright as possible:

And here is the striking finished ring:

If you have any jewellery that you aren’t wearing or that you don’t love as much as you used to, we would love to show what is possible.

Call us on 08 8338 3109, email us on hello@pike.com.au or pop into our lovely studio workshop. We’d love to see you.