r/jewelers

for someone buying pearl jewelry online for the first time, what are the biggest green flags and red flags? not looking for store recommendations as much as things i should actually be paying attention to while comparing different sellers. anything you wish more buyers knew before they spent their money?

I spent two years as a casting technician at a jewelry casting house and I ended up really loving jewelry but wanting more. I wanted to learn how to be a bench jeweler but I wasn’t able to move within my company. I left that job and started applying to jewelry jobs, but no one would take me because of my lack of bench skills. I’ve been taking a continuing education course throughout the summer at a local arts school and now I have some experience with fabrication, but there have been no jobs listed in my metro area for a while now. Every time I pass a jeweler when I’m driving I wonder about stopping in and just asking if they need help or would take an apprentice, or if they could point me in the direction of someone who did/could, would that potentially get me anywhere or would they just find it annoying or odd? I’d even work unpaid on weekends or evenings just to get more training and experience. Going back to school properly isn’t an option for me, but I will be taking the continuing education course again once it starts again in the fall. I really want to be a jeweler and I’m not sure what I should do and could use some advice or guidance

I'm new to jewelry making and I recently cast a basic ring with a half-bezel setting in silicon bronze that I plan on setting a 7mm cushion cut synthetic sapphire into. Currently the bezels on either side are about 3mm thick and 6mm apart. I think I should file down the setting but I'm not sure how thick and tall the bezel walls should be and also how I can create the bezel seat. My dremel is really old an creates lots of vibrations so I'm probably going to have to use needle files to do this.

I am making a 9ct gold ring for my Dad with a bezel and cabochon in.

I have made countless rings with bezeled cabochons on with silver, though I am finding working with gold a lot trickier. As it seems to be more prone to getting damaged by the flame (despite melting at a higher temperature to silver). 

I have discovered with gold there are the same variations of solder as there are with silver i.e. hard, medium, easy and extra easy. I am planning on getting all these different variations (even if it is expensive). 

 Most of the solder comes in thin wire and with what I’ve bought so far, I have had to put it through my rolling mill to get it wide and flat enough to sit under my joints before I can solder them together. 

 After soldering the gold solder does not tend to cover the joints as much as with silver leaving lines where it’s been joined.

 I also feel a lot more nervous working with gold as it’s drastically more expensive than silver so “the stakes are a lot higher”. Usually before I make something with silver I make it with a base metal first to get the technique right, though the difference in price between silver to gold is much more than a base metal like copper to silver. Could anyone give me advice how to overcome this pressure?

 Can anyone share with me their experiences with solder gold to soldering silver.

Has anybody dealt with this company before? Quick back story: I bought my wife’s engagement ring there years ago and wedding ring, it needed a repair as a stone had fallen out, the company has received the ring for repair and now has ghosted us and doesn’t respond to anything for weeks and weeks.

Anybody ever experienced something similar?

Hi!
I have been a jeweler for years now. In the past couple years I’ve moved into engagement ring design.

Recently I’ve been getting very stressed with customers. They’re making me dread jewelry. They use terms they told me they learned on Reddit or from ai to try and tell me what to do and 90% of the time they are wrong.

I know exactly what types of concerns my customers will bring up based on what’s a popular ring topic on Reddit. I know my customers will grossly misunderstand diamond pricing and metal pricing based on what scam ring sites are being linked often in the comment sections.

They fight me on so many things.

I had a guy mix up a VVS1 diamond and a VVS2 diamond and went on and on about how much better the VVS2 is and when I pointed out that he had the VVS2 in his hands not the VVS1 he back tracked and said “oh yes now I see it. I don’t want this one it’s not sparkly enough” did not listen when I said he shouldn’t be able to tell them a part by these clarities alone.

I had another person ask me to get a cut of diamond that perplexed everyone who heard. She insisted it was real. I finally found one singular instagram account with what she said on it. It was an ai photo and a link to a scam website. Literally no website had a diamond by that name anywhere else on google.

Another person wanted to buy a 7 carat NATURAL (she literally called labs “trash no matter what the marketing people say”)and said she researched diamonds and she knows her budget is more than enough so not to push her budget. Want to know her budget? $3k…not 300k not 30k… 3000 including tax and setting costs.

I used to get so excited to discuss jewelry but now I get so much stress. I just preemptively know people are going to say incorrect things no matter if I’m at work or anywhere else. It makes me want to just quit jewelry all together.

What did you do over the years to deal with growing resentment of customers? How do you cope with customers stressing you out to the point you start to lose your love for the art?