Ideal Cut Diamonds

22k yellow gold and boulder opal bead necklace

About a week ago one of the jewelers I know called me and asked if I could help her out with a customer she was working with.  She helps people trying to do a "do it yourself" project with jewelry sometimes (not something I recommend as inexperience in this field rarely leads to fine results but that's another story).  So she had a young gent who had managed to design a ring (nothing very original but that's also another story) on a computer using Cad-Cam and had a local casting company cast the piece up in platinum for him.  He had purchased three diamonds from an online company whose big thing is that they (supposedly---but that's yet another story) sell ethically sourced stones and jewelry.

The reason they came to me is because somewhere in the design to casting process some little beads had been added in on various parts of the ring that were not a design element and were not supposed to be there.  No one knew how they even got on there.  They weren't a mistake in the casting process as they were quite regularly placed.  Unfortunately they were regularly placed in areas where it was just about impossible to get them cleaned out of.  (Again, this is why I don't recommend do it yourself jewelry projects.)  He also needed to get the stones set into the four prong settings.  I don't believe in four prong settings because if you lose one prong you can lose the stone. If you have six prong settings you have to lose three prongs to lose a stone.  But when confronted with a design that only four prongs were going to work on (and this was one of them) I believe you need to make the prongs substantial enough that it is going to take quite a bit to knock one off or wear it down.  The prongs on this ring were nowhere near heavy enough, but again, this is why I don't recommend this kind of stuff (have I said that enough yet?).  So when no one else can do it, people like to bring it to me.  Sweet, huh?

But this isn't really about the ring itself. It's about ideal cut diamonds.  So what is an ideal cut diamond?

In 1919 a mathematician diamond cutter named Marcel Tolkowsky worked out a formula on what angles to cut a diamond to that would result in the maximum amount of brilliance, scintillation and fire in a diamond.  He figured out how the light would best travel through the stone and be reflected back out at the viewer by the facets below.  This involved a series of calculations, including the size of the table (the top flat area on a diamond) relative to the total size of the stone, the crown angle (the angle the top part of the diamond is cut to), the pavilion angle (the angle the bottom part of the diamond is cut to), and the crown and pavilion height percentage. An ideal cut diamond has to have the correct measurements in all of these categories in order to be considered ideal.

Tolkowsky had a cousin named Lazare Kaplan who was also in the diamond business and he went on to cut, promote and sell ideal cut diamonds and he was the first to do that.  The company he formed, originally Lazare Kaplan and now Lazare Diamond, has been in the forefront of many of the innovations in the diamond marketplace.  They developed the technology to laser inscribe the girdles of diamonds that is so prevalent today among other things.

Now when I started selling Lazare ideal cut diamonds about 25 years ago, hardly any diamonds (less than 1%) were actually being cut to ideal proportions. The primary reason for this was because when cutters cut a stone to ideal proportions they lose more weight from the rough than normal.  Most cutters, being paid by weight, just wanted to get the largest stone possible from the rough and since at certain sizes (.50 ct., .75 ct. 1 ct. etc.) there were significant price jumps just for hitting that weight, stones were often cut horribly just to hit the desired weight.

However about ten years ago, there was a subtle shift in the martketplace and the fourth "C"--cut--started to become more and more important as customers realized that the stone could be a "D" color, Flawless and still look bad if it was poorly cut.  However, as always seems to happen in business, as soon as people started to look for better cuts, the marketplace stepped in and began to "market" cut as well.  Unfortunately (and also as always seem to happen in business) this meant that once the term "ideal cut" was acknowledged as an important term, it began to be applied to any diamond that the companies thought they could get away with it.  They described stones as "near" ideal (a little like the idea of being a "little" pregnant) first.  Then as the Internet companies jumped into the fray they began to come up with more new terms like "super" ideal, "signature" ideal, or "insert company name here" ideal.

These are all completely bogus terms.  An ideal cut stone has to fall into the angles and sizes specified by Tolkowsky to be considered an ideal cut stone.  An excellent cut grade from the GIA or other gem labs is not necessarily an ideal cut stone.  It may be a well cut stone but it isn't an ideal cut. Actually some of the terms are slightly nuts.  One well known on line diamond site lists stones that are ideal cut and then others that are "signature" ideal cuts.  In looking over the angles on the stones it seems that what they sold as "ideal" cuts had no relation to a true ideal cut, but that the "signature" ideal cuts actually came in closer to what a true ideal cut should be. In other words the term "ideal cut" has been completely bastardized to fit whatever marketing gimmick the companies choose to use.

So back to my original story.  The young gent handed me the three stones he had purchased from the "ethically sourced" company and told me he had bought them as "super ideal" cuts.  The pricing on them seemed a little low for anything like that so I took a quick peek under the microscope at them.  It was immediately apparent that not one of them fit into the ideal category.  There is one thing you can look for on a diamond table that will almost instantly tell you if the stone is ideal.  A diamond's table that is in the 53%-57% range established by Tolkowsky as part of the ideal range will almost always have the lines that create the table bow inward surrounding it.  It took me less than 30 seconds to see this was not the case.  I confirmed it later using more advanced measuring devices but there was absolutely no way the stones would have been considered ideal cut by anyone who actually knew what an ideal cut is.

 So first of all how can the company call itself ethical if it's lying about what it's selling?  Secondly, while the stones seemed inexpensive for an ideal cut, they weren't actually ideal cut so there is no possible way the customer could have compared pricing to see if he was actually getting a good price.
The Internet is like the Wild West and there are very few controls on what is allowed.  I have personally seen more bogus information on metals, colored stones and diamonds then you could imagine.  My suggestion, as always, is to work with a local, well educated jeweler.  Work with someone you can talk to and who you trust.  It's always better to spend a little more but to know that you got what you paid for rather than just to look at a final price tag.

The ring, incidentally came out just fine when I was done with it.  You never would have known there had been some bizarre small bumps all over it.  I still wouldn't have made the prongs as thin as they were but there wasn't anything I could do about that.

If you are a regular reader you might notice that I have installed a like and share button for Facebook.  If you are on social media, please use the buttons.  Actually you can even go through now and post some of your favorite articles I've written on there if you'd like.  The more people who know about me, the better off I am.  Thanks so much.

The picture above is of my wife's 25th anniversary present.  It's 22k gold with boulder opal beads.  But I can make one for you too if you'd like!

Shop Local

22k and 18k gold Ethiopian Opal Pendant

Given what the subject matter of this article was going to be I was amused when I opened up my blog site in preparation to write and I took a look at the stats provided for me.  Now admittedly, I don't really trust the stats on the blog site because (even though this site is run by Google) the stats on my Google Analytics are always completely different from the ones on here.  But what was amusing was that the traffic sources showed that the second highest number of my readers after the US was in the Ukraine.  Apparently 8% of my readers were from there. Now who the heck in the Ukraine would care about what I'm writing on my blog? Unfortunately what the analytics don't tell you is whether they actually read the articles or if they are just trolling through for some other reason.  But if anyone from the Ukraine IS actually reading stuff I write I'd love to hear from you.  I'd especially like to know why you're reading it!

Shop Local.  That's a phrase I hear all the time these days.  Shop Local.  It's like Small Business Saturday that American Express has started up in the holiday season (more on that in a later article).  It's like the new retail key word.  Everyone says I want to shop local and that it's important to shop local.  And trust me, I am a HUGE fan of shopping local.  So why is it that every year at the holidays, on line sales go up and bricks and mortar sales go down??  If everyone were shopping local they most assuredly wouldn't be shopping on line (unless of course it was from a local shop---but then why wouldn't you actually go into the store itself in that case?).

So let's discuss why you SHOULD shop local.  And I'll start with a recent story (that actually is about why you should shop local and why you should also use a local jeweler who actually knows what they are doing). I had a young woman come in with a ring that the stone had fallen out of.  It was a sterling silver ring with a rutilated quartz and a couple of gold bead accents.  She bought it on line at a fairly "reputable" catalog and online company (they don't only sell jewelry and most of you would know the name) and paid $400 for it.  A month or so after she bought it the ring broke. The shank detached from the setting on one side.  She brought it to a jeweler her mother had always used for stuff because he was cheap. The guy decided that rather than do the repair properly and remove the stone to repair the ring he went in and used lead solder on it. Now lead solder immediately pollutes the metal and you can never go back in and work on the piece at a full temperature again.  Plus, in this case, it means the girl is going to have lead touching her finger all the time. The advantage to the jeweler in this case was that because lead solder melts at such a low temperature he didn't have to worry about damage to the stone.

However, shortly after she got it back from him, lo and behold, the stone just fell out of the setting (she didn't lose it), and that is when she finally brought it in to me.  So my first comment was, if you had brought this to me I would have told you to send the ring back to the place you got it from.  Something you pay $400 for is supposed to last longer than a few months (see this article of mine on implied warranties).  Then I saw the lead solder and had to explain how that was basically a butcher job.  Then I actually looked at the stone setting and realized two things.  First of all the stone had been glued in and secondly the bezel a) did not come up high enough to actually set parts of the stone with it and b) even where it was high enough no one had bothered to actually SET the stone by pushing the bezel down on top of the stone. So when the guy heated it even the small amount necessary for the lead solder to flow, it had loosened up the glue and the stone came right out. Now never mind that the jeweler, if he had looked at the ring carefully would have seen that the stone was only glued in (hence allowing him to easily unglue it and not have to use lead solder), but how could the original jeweler make and produce a ring like this and then the large Internet firm sell a ring like this that was almost guaranteed to lose the stone (even if no work had been done on it).

What does all of this have to do with shopping local?  Well first of all if the young woman had bought the ring at a local shop and it broke, instead of the issue of shipping something back and forth to who knows where, she could have walked in with it and let the original seller deal with it.  And secondly, instead of dealing with a large on line sale company, whose only goal is to maximize profits (and therefore pushes their suppliers to produce stuff as cheaply as possible--which inevitably leads to short cuts like doing nothing but gluing a stone into a setting), it's just possible that the original piece would  have been made properly to begin with. And when there is a problem, it is always better to be able to actually look someone in the eye to deal with them as opposed to talking to someone on a phone who is reading a script in front of them. 

In our price driven frenzy to always get everything for as little as possible we screw ourselves over.  And in our new laziness of never wanting to actually go into a store we can never really see, or compare, what it is we're actually getting, and when something goes wrong there is no easy way to deal with it.

This doesn't even begin to deal with the issues of all of the scams that are going on in the Internet, especially in the jewelry field.  Nor does it cover the issue of having your credit card information stolen when shopping with large firms (besides the fact that we have proper protocols in place to avert these attacks, no criminal in his right mind would bother with small shops like mine and most of the local ones around me).  Or the fact that shopping local keeps much of your money supporting the local economy instead of lining the pockets of the Walton family or one of the other billionaires who seem to own most of America's large shopping markets.  Will it cost you more to shop locally?  Most likely, but at least the money is going to your neighbors and your local community.

The opal pendant at top was a custom piece I made for a customer at Christmas. Unfortunately it doesn't show you quite how stunning the opal actually is but opals are notoriously hard to photograph.  Trust me on this, the opal was spectacular. 

Back From Vacation and Meeting Up With Old Friends

The Ventana Wilderness

I have just returned from our annual vacation to California, hence the long delay in writing articles for my blog.  We were celebrating our 25th wedding anniversary and it was a very nice trip. The weather was absolutely wonderful (from our point of view---from California's point of view it was terrible as they are experiencing a severe drought), we got out and about quite a bit, visited Napa, saw lots of wildlife and ate a lot of (mostly) good food.  One of the best things that happened though was that we ran into an old friend.  About five years ago I wrote this blog: http://spirerjewelers.blogspot.com/2009/09/custom-work-iv-and-why-im-in-this.html 
about a prior trip to Big Sur that we had made (actually to celebrate our 20th anniversary).  In it I talk about the great time we had with Chef Philippe Breneman and the ring that I made up for him.  By the time we had returned to California after I made Philippe's ring he had moved on from the hotel group that he had been working for and we were unable to locate him anywhere.  We made inquiries at Ventana (the inn we stay at) but responses were vague and no one that we spoke to was able to tell us where he had gone to, much to our dismay.

But as it happens, on this trip, I had a discussion with the general manager of Ventana and Philippe's name came up.  As it turns out he had recently opened, with two other partners, a new restaurant in Los Gatos, which conveniently was on our way back to the hotel we were staying at for one night in order to be closer to the airport.  When we walked in, we could see Philippe in the open kitchen and as I walked closer his eyes got wider and wider.  He held up the hand with his wedding band and looked at me and said: "Is that Daniel?".  We had an extremely pleasant reunion and were once again served with a simply phenomenal meal.  We told him to just give us whatever he wanted to and he personally brought each dish out to us, explained what was in it and treated us as if we were royalty despite not having seen him in five years.  What a simply wonderful experience!  Not only was the food even better than our first experience with him (I truly think he is one of the best chefs in the country right now) but he was as wonderful as we remembered him to be.  It was a fantastic finish to our trip.  If we had a choice, and he were closer to where we were staying, I'm sure we would have eaten there every night!  The name of his restaurant is The Lexington House and you can find their website here. I know many of my readers are local to this area but if you should be going to California in the future and you are anywhere near Los Gatos you should absolutely look them up.  His partners, incidentally, are both mixologists and they have quite the drink scene going on as well.

He gave me his band to bring home, clean up, and redo the sandblasting on it so when I have done that I'm going to get Kady to take a new and better picture of it which I will post here shortly.  Kady is off getting married this weekend (the nerve!) so I can't get her to take a picture yet but when she's back I'll get it posted. 

This is one of the best things about my business.  The connections made, because of the emotional content of what I sell, can be so strong that they can survive even long gaps in contact.  You may not remember where you got your last iPad or television set, but you always remember where you got your wedding band.  And when it is worn by someone who believes in doing business the same way as I do it's even more special!

The picture above, by the way, is one I took when I had walked about a mile and a half up the mountain road behind the inn.  If I had turned 45 degrees you would have seen the Pacific Ocean as well. 

More New Things in for the Holidays

Here are some pictures of some beads I recently got in. The light blue are natural color (unheated) aquamarine crystals:
 

Natural color aquamarine crystal beads

These darker blue beads are tumbled tanzanite.  I haven't actually ever seen anything quite like this before in tanzanite:

Tumbled Tanzanite Beads

The pendant below is a new one I just made up with all natural color unheated orange sapphires:

18k Yellow Gold and Orange Sapphire pendant

That's it for today.  Just wanted to show you some of the new goodies. 

On Charging a Fair Price for a Product

18k gold loop de loop bracelet with orange sapphires

I read an interesting article in the paper the other day about how some of the mainstream, larger retail outlets have started teaching their employees how to bargain with their customers.  In other words they were giving them permission to have an ongoing sale all the time basically for anyone who asks for it.  Unfortunately this type of practice leads to a plethora of ethical issues.  First of all it means that everything is basically on sale all the time.  But if something is on sale all the time, then there is no "real" price anymore.  The sale price becomes the real price and it would require further deductions for anything to be considered on sale.  Secondly it's unfair to customers who don't know to ask or are too timid to ask for a discount.  They end up paying more than anyone else is for exactly the same item.  These people also end up supporting the sales prices for the other customers because without some of the people paying full price, the stores couldn't afford to give the discounts they are to the ones who ask for it. Third, and most importantly, it means that most stores will raise their prices to cover the discounts they are being asked for. This is both unethical and again punishes those who can't, or won't, ask for the discount.

My question goes back to one I brought up recently (in this article about the airline industry).  Why is it that we have such a big problem with charging a fair price for a product and sticking with it?  Admittedly a lot of this issue falls on the heads of the retailers out there because they encourage this kind of behavior and we seem to fall for the hype and the idea that we are getting some kind of a "deal".  Unfortunately usually we aren't getting a deal, for a variety of reasons.  Often the retailers simply mark their items up more knowing that they are going to be negotiated down, so it's not really a deal. 

Or sometimes stubbornness on our part may also lead one to think they're getting a deal. I have a very good friend who hates to pay full price for anything (despite the fact that he can afford pretty much anything he wants---in part it might come from when he was a lot poorer).  He told me a story once of spending three hours driving around town to get a better deal on a set of tires.  I think on that search he managed to ultimately save himself a hundred or a hundred and fifty dollars.  Sounds pretty good on a $600 purchase.  But let's say he paid the full price at the first place.  He'd have three hours to do something far more productive with, whether that would be more time at work (where he would get paid), or with his family, or just going to see a movie and relaxing a bit.  Now I know we don't think along exactly the same lines (my idea of a vacation is to go somewhere for awhile and do nothing---his is to go do everything possible in the area he's vacationing in) but in three hours I could have: 1) made up a beautiful new piece of jewelry worth way more than $150 2) caught up on my sleep so that I could actually see straight most of the time, 3) spent some time with my wife doing something we like to do together, or 4) gone out to get some needed exercise thereby increasing my life span a bit.  All of these things are worth far more than the money I would have saved if I had pursued the same exercise in tire purchasing. 

So in my store I believe in putting my pieces out at a fair price for the value you get.  I have an advantage over many retailers in that you can't get my work anywhere else but that doesn't mean that I sell my goods for more than they are worth.  I price it in a way that lets the customer get something of value with stringent warranties, that is creative, made locally, often with recycled materials, allows me to make a modest living, and allows the customer to have something that very few other people have. People know what to expect when they come in my shop and that's exactly the way I like it.

The bracelet at the top is a piece I just put out. It's one of my loop de loop chains but I have added some of the orange sapphires I got from my new German connection that I also got the jellyfish earring carvings from.