Rno
Rough_Rock
- Joined
- Jan 22, 2011
- Messages
- 37
What follows is a long story, stretching over four decades, but focusing on today. If you just want to see the ring, scroll down for the pictures. For the readers, enjoy!
I am a male. Either, because it is my birth stone, or because I have always been fascinated by small, precise things, I loved diamonds. It took some time before I should have my first one.
The 1st diamond
I bought it as a young man from some money I had earned on a vacation job. It was a standard men's ring, white gold, one round diamond of .25ct. I don't remember details on the stone.
After about 11 years, I had gotten tired of the ring, so I had a platinum tension ring made for this stone. At the time, the Bunz rings that looked similar would have cost three times as much—but would probably have prevented what was to ensue: I lost the stone while dancing, when I whacked the ring against a chair along the dance floor. It was not to be found again. I bought a replacement, same size.
The 2nd diamond
To prevent another loss, I had the ring connected at the bottom. I never liked that, because it was not an open tension ring anymore, but it seemed prudent to do. Unfortunately, this connection was not as strong as the force of water in a stormy sea, when I held onto a thick rope for dear life when a wave got too high and I got under water. The tight grip must have pried the ring open and the stone must still today be covered by sand at a beach of Mauritius in the Indian Ocean.
A new diamond was in order, but with a stronger link on my tension ring.
The 3rd diamond
Still the same 1/4 of a carat, now with a bit more focus on quality (and all I knew at the time was to look for color and clarity), I had a bomb-proof link soldered in to fuse the tension ring. Now it looked even less like what I originally wanted, but that's how it was. Then I got tired of the heavy, thick beast on my finger and had the stone set in a small, golden ring that I could wear on my pinky finger. This was at a goldsmith who had done previous work for me and I had been a regular customer there. When I picked up the ring, I noticed that the stone was a lot smaller and did not display some very specific details. I mentioned that to the goldsmith and she was shocked that I would say something like that, in light of what I was implying. But I was 100% sure and repeated my observation. While I believed her that she would not swap a stone (particularly one with a relatively low value), it was still a fact. While she had no explanation and did not accept guilt, she did offer to find me an equivalent stone, and she did.
The 4th diamond
When it came in, I inspected it and was happy. She now set this new stone in the ring, and when I picked it up, she had a big smile on her face: they had found my original stone, wedged under a leg of the work bench, where the pressure had caused a small chip to come out along the girdle. While it was still not clear how the goldsmith could just go for a new stone when s/he could not find mine again, I accepted the explanation, took the new stone, and left. Up to now I had lived in Germany but I would soon emigrate to southern California. There, after many years, I bought a Vespa (for nostalgic reasons, remembering the good times in Mediterranean countries, where they can be seen in the millions), and on one cold (cold for SoCal) day, the pinky ring must have fallen off my cold and shrunken finger without my noticing it. I'm pretty sure that it happened when I got in and out of my gloves at Trader Joe's, where I shopped for groceries, but by the time I had come to that conclusion and went back to look, I could not find it anywhere.
That was almost the end of my diamond relationships. And then, something wonderful happened: I met a woman with Italian background, (who also rode a Vespa), and who lived in Utah. We met on the Internet on a Vespa forum, and after being attracted to her posts for a while, I contacted her to get to know her better. Let's just say, a super-intense emailing phase began, followed by an even more intense telephone phase when I called her every day to talk 3 to 4 hours (note: I was one who, before meeting her, would not talk more than maybe 20 minutes a week, on or off the phone), and then she visited me in CA. The 3rd degree would be a huge understatement to describe what I went through during that weekend when she “interviewed” me and screened me for my worthiness, but it was all good. Then, I visited her for my 60th birthday in Utah, so I could check out her turf. I must have lived up to her standards, because after that visit, she would invite me to meet up with her in Rome where she would be for a conference. Then, in Rome, we were sure it wasn't a silly move to buy our wedding rings there (18ct, like all Italian gold, and in a rosé-ish yellow gold, by uno-a-erre).
After a few more visits there and here, we eloped on a Vespa to get married on 8/8/08, having met less than 6 months earlier, 8/8/08 being only the 7th time that we were actually face-to-face after our blitz-fast, long-distance courtship. Other than being married on a date I would not so easily forget, it would have some other significance later. Bear with me.
Before I moved to Utah to live with the love of my life, I had my Italian-bought wedding ring modified by a SoCal goldsmith, who had done something similar to the one I lost: I wanted seven pyramids indented in the ring. I have this thing for pyramids, don't ask me why. Anyway, I also wanted some kind of a diamond in the ring, but my wife was not too happy about the idea, so we settled for a small .017ct princess cut diamond, basically a pyramide too, to be set in my ring. Done. Not much brilliance, let alone fire, ever came from that stone, but it had symbolic value.
When I had bought that little princess cut stone, I had ordered a total of four similar stones, all different in size, so I could chose the one that would fit the best. I had ordered these online from Brad Freiden at israel-diamonds.com [nci].
Then my colon cancer came back, with a fist-sized metastasis in the liver. I had surgery and then started chemotherapy, which almost succeeded to achieve what the cancer had not: to kill me. So it was stopped at about half way, and it took me about a year to be somewhat near my old self again. Without my wife, I am certain I would have died during that chemo phase. She is worth more than all the diamonds you could ever think of, and then some. But she herself wouldn't ever want a diamond for herself. She is very low key but big heart. I consider myself the luckiest man on earth to have her. And if you think that just because she does not want a diamond ring she is low maintenance, think again …
So, after 2 more metastases in the lungs, removed and healed well, and so far without recurrence, and also back working in a new career (translating into German, working from home), I had some income again, and made another approach to include a more visible and active diamond in my ring. She gave me the green light, and I feverishly started looking for a new stone for me.
The 5th diamond
Okay, if you read up to here, you will have come up with a different number, but I just don't count the little pyramid as a reincarnation. So, back to the 5th now.
I was on a budget, for fairness towards my wife who supported both of us for more than two years while I was sick, and also to just be prudent with myself. So, going to the local jeweler was out, I expected that to cost significantly more than buying one online. The problem was, my Italian-bought wedding ring would only accommodate a smallish stone, around .2 ct, and the online jewelers' search engines would only start looking somewhere between .3 to .5ct and up. Nothing for the modest buyer like me…until I found gemfind.com [nci]. In their signature diamond section, I would get all the details I needed, and by now, I had learned about the significance of cut over all the other criteria. So, I looked for a very specific range of cut quality, one that would likely come close to a H&A diamond. And I couldn't believe it when I found it: .2 ct E IF with a cut resulting in an HCA of 0.9 (which I didn't know yet at the time—PS was still unknown to me). A picture of the unset stone is below and more can be found here.
But how to set it, in my existing wedding ring, with the most simple setting possible? It was an interesting phase to look through pages and pages of settings here on PS and on other sites on the net. Then I focused in on what I still don’t know the proper name of (tell me if you know) and saw a local goldsmith whom I felt knew what he was doing. After about an hour of talking and showing him sketches and pictures, he said he could do what I want, and it would cost me $565 plus tax. Gulp. I hadn't expected that. I was hoping for less but thought $300 would be the maximum. He would then drop the price a hair to $535 but that was it. I had to leave. Then I asked friends who had jewelry about their goldsmith, and I got a name. I visited the guy, a master goldsmith/store owner with German background, and he wanted to build an ever-so-slight dome to account for the height of the stone without it poking me in the finger. I didn't like the dome idea, but understood his point. He estimated $300. There, that made sense, and I had a good feeling for his qualification too. But I had one more name on the list, a big jewelry store with an employed goldsmith. He said he could do what I originally wanted with no need for a dome but he would add a bit inside the ring to build distance from the culet. That was my man. When the sales person then calculated the cost, I almost fell off my chair: $132. Why not. But I had to think about the three very different bids and approaches, before I would be ready to commit to one.
While I was deliberating, my wife mentioned the husband of a popular Italian restaurant-owner, who in his Italian past was a goldsmith. I felt a bit uncertain whether I wanted to trust a former goldsmith who might do a hack job back in his kitchen, but I heard of one specific reference that made me want to give this guy a try. He actually has a small goldsmith job at the side, so he had to have the tools and the materials necessary. I visited him in his restaurant and showed him what I had and what I wanted. He understood and said he can do it (no dome, but a bit of adding height inside). Good. Then he quoted $65 for the job. Did I hear right? It just sounded too low for quality work. But my wife and other Italian friends had told me that goldsmiths in Italy are significantly less expensive than American ones, so I accepted his bid and gave him the job. You can see the results below.
I am so super-extremely happy with his work, it is exactly what I wanted and had envisioned. He is a genius to make it work so well, and when I picked up the ring, I already gave him the next project: a pendant for my wife to hold the other three pyramid diamonds. I'll make a separate post about it when it is done, and rest assured, it will only be half as long
Oh, I forgot to explain the significance of my wedding date (8/8/0. When I had the ring done, I asked him to engrave my wife's name and this: + - ∞.
In case you are not familiar with it, it means: today I love you more (+) than yesterday and less (-) than tomorrow, for all eternity (∞). (psst, the eternity thing was her idea. See, I told you she is not low maintenance …)
I am a male. Either, because it is my birth stone, or because I have always been fascinated by small, precise things, I loved diamonds. It took some time before I should have my first one.
The 1st diamond
I bought it as a young man from some money I had earned on a vacation job. It was a standard men's ring, white gold, one round diamond of .25ct. I don't remember details on the stone.
After about 11 years, I had gotten tired of the ring, so I had a platinum tension ring made for this stone. At the time, the Bunz rings that looked similar would have cost three times as much—but would probably have prevented what was to ensue: I lost the stone while dancing, when I whacked the ring against a chair along the dance floor. It was not to be found again. I bought a replacement, same size.
The 2nd diamond
To prevent another loss, I had the ring connected at the bottom. I never liked that, because it was not an open tension ring anymore, but it seemed prudent to do. Unfortunately, this connection was not as strong as the force of water in a stormy sea, when I held onto a thick rope for dear life when a wave got too high and I got under water. The tight grip must have pried the ring open and the stone must still today be covered by sand at a beach of Mauritius in the Indian Ocean.
A new diamond was in order, but with a stronger link on my tension ring.
The 3rd diamond
Still the same 1/4 of a carat, now with a bit more focus on quality (and all I knew at the time was to look for color and clarity), I had a bomb-proof link soldered in to fuse the tension ring. Now it looked even less like what I originally wanted, but that's how it was. Then I got tired of the heavy, thick beast on my finger and had the stone set in a small, golden ring that I could wear on my pinky finger. This was at a goldsmith who had done previous work for me and I had been a regular customer there. When I picked up the ring, I noticed that the stone was a lot smaller and did not display some very specific details. I mentioned that to the goldsmith and she was shocked that I would say something like that, in light of what I was implying. But I was 100% sure and repeated my observation. While I believed her that she would not swap a stone (particularly one with a relatively low value), it was still a fact. While she had no explanation and did not accept guilt, she did offer to find me an equivalent stone, and she did.
The 4th diamond
When it came in, I inspected it and was happy. She now set this new stone in the ring, and when I picked it up, she had a big smile on her face: they had found my original stone, wedged under a leg of the work bench, where the pressure had caused a small chip to come out along the girdle. While it was still not clear how the goldsmith could just go for a new stone when s/he could not find mine again, I accepted the explanation, took the new stone, and left. Up to now I had lived in Germany but I would soon emigrate to southern California. There, after many years, I bought a Vespa (for nostalgic reasons, remembering the good times in Mediterranean countries, where they can be seen in the millions), and on one cold (cold for SoCal) day, the pinky ring must have fallen off my cold and shrunken finger without my noticing it. I'm pretty sure that it happened when I got in and out of my gloves at Trader Joe's, where I shopped for groceries, but by the time I had come to that conclusion and went back to look, I could not find it anywhere.
That was almost the end of my diamond relationships. And then, something wonderful happened: I met a woman with Italian background, (who also rode a Vespa), and who lived in Utah. We met on the Internet on a Vespa forum, and after being attracted to her posts for a while, I contacted her to get to know her better. Let's just say, a super-intense emailing phase began, followed by an even more intense telephone phase when I called her every day to talk 3 to 4 hours (note: I was one who, before meeting her, would not talk more than maybe 20 minutes a week, on or off the phone), and then she visited me in CA. The 3rd degree would be a huge understatement to describe what I went through during that weekend when she “interviewed” me and screened me for my worthiness, but it was all good. Then, I visited her for my 60th birthday in Utah, so I could check out her turf. I must have lived up to her standards, because after that visit, she would invite me to meet up with her in Rome where she would be for a conference. Then, in Rome, we were sure it wasn't a silly move to buy our wedding rings there (18ct, like all Italian gold, and in a rosé-ish yellow gold, by uno-a-erre).
After a few more visits there and here, we eloped on a Vespa to get married on 8/8/08, having met less than 6 months earlier, 8/8/08 being only the 7th time that we were actually face-to-face after our blitz-fast, long-distance courtship. Other than being married on a date I would not so easily forget, it would have some other significance later. Bear with me.
Before I moved to Utah to live with the love of my life, I had my Italian-bought wedding ring modified by a SoCal goldsmith, who had done something similar to the one I lost: I wanted seven pyramids indented in the ring. I have this thing for pyramids, don't ask me why. Anyway, I also wanted some kind of a diamond in the ring, but my wife was not too happy about the idea, so we settled for a small .017ct princess cut diamond, basically a pyramide too, to be set in my ring. Done. Not much brilliance, let alone fire, ever came from that stone, but it had symbolic value.
When I had bought that little princess cut stone, I had ordered a total of four similar stones, all different in size, so I could chose the one that would fit the best. I had ordered these online from Brad Freiden at israel-diamonds.com [nci].
Then my colon cancer came back, with a fist-sized metastasis in the liver. I had surgery and then started chemotherapy, which almost succeeded to achieve what the cancer had not: to kill me. So it was stopped at about half way, and it took me about a year to be somewhat near my old self again. Without my wife, I am certain I would have died during that chemo phase. She is worth more than all the diamonds you could ever think of, and then some. But she herself wouldn't ever want a diamond for herself. She is very low key but big heart. I consider myself the luckiest man on earth to have her. And if you think that just because she does not want a diamond ring she is low maintenance, think again …
So, after 2 more metastases in the lungs, removed and healed well, and so far without recurrence, and also back working in a new career (translating into German, working from home), I had some income again, and made another approach to include a more visible and active diamond in my ring. She gave me the green light, and I feverishly started looking for a new stone for me.
The 5th diamond
Okay, if you read up to here, you will have come up with a different number, but I just don't count the little pyramid as a reincarnation. So, back to the 5th now.
I was on a budget, for fairness towards my wife who supported both of us for more than two years while I was sick, and also to just be prudent with myself. So, going to the local jeweler was out, I expected that to cost significantly more than buying one online. The problem was, my Italian-bought wedding ring would only accommodate a smallish stone, around .2 ct, and the online jewelers' search engines would only start looking somewhere between .3 to .5ct and up. Nothing for the modest buyer like me…until I found gemfind.com [nci]. In their signature diamond section, I would get all the details I needed, and by now, I had learned about the significance of cut over all the other criteria. So, I looked for a very specific range of cut quality, one that would likely come close to a H&A diamond. And I couldn't believe it when I found it: .2 ct E IF with a cut resulting in an HCA of 0.9 (which I didn't know yet at the time—PS was still unknown to me). A picture of the unset stone is below and more can be found here.
But how to set it, in my existing wedding ring, with the most simple setting possible? It was an interesting phase to look through pages and pages of settings here on PS and on other sites on the net. Then I focused in on what I still don’t know the proper name of (tell me if you know) and saw a local goldsmith whom I felt knew what he was doing. After about an hour of talking and showing him sketches and pictures, he said he could do what I want, and it would cost me $565 plus tax. Gulp. I hadn't expected that. I was hoping for less but thought $300 would be the maximum. He would then drop the price a hair to $535 but that was it. I had to leave. Then I asked friends who had jewelry about their goldsmith, and I got a name. I visited the guy, a master goldsmith/store owner with German background, and he wanted to build an ever-so-slight dome to account for the height of the stone without it poking me in the finger. I didn't like the dome idea, but understood his point. He estimated $300. There, that made sense, and I had a good feeling for his qualification too. But I had one more name on the list, a big jewelry store with an employed goldsmith. He said he could do what I originally wanted with no need for a dome but he would add a bit inside the ring to build distance from the culet. That was my man. When the sales person then calculated the cost, I almost fell off my chair: $132. Why not. But I had to think about the three very different bids and approaches, before I would be ready to commit to one.
While I was deliberating, my wife mentioned the husband of a popular Italian restaurant-owner, who in his Italian past was a goldsmith. I felt a bit uncertain whether I wanted to trust a former goldsmith who might do a hack job back in his kitchen, but I heard of one specific reference that made me want to give this guy a try. He actually has a small goldsmith job at the side, so he had to have the tools and the materials necessary. I visited him in his restaurant and showed him what I had and what I wanted. He understood and said he can do it (no dome, but a bit of adding height inside). Good. Then he quoted $65 for the job. Did I hear right? It just sounded too low for quality work. But my wife and other Italian friends had told me that goldsmiths in Italy are significantly less expensive than American ones, so I accepted his bid and gave him the job. You can see the results below.
I am so super-extremely happy with his work, it is exactly what I wanted and had envisioned. He is a genius to make it work so well, and when I picked up the ring, I already gave him the next project: a pendant for my wife to hold the other three pyramid diamonds. I'll make a separate post about it when it is done, and rest assured, it will only be half as long
Oh, I forgot to explain the significance of my wedding date (8/8/0
. When I had the ring done, I asked him to engrave my wife's name and this: + - ∞.In case you are not familiar with it, it means: today I love you more (+) than yesterday and less (-) than tomorrow, for all eternity (∞). (psst, the eternity thing was her idea. See, I told you she is not low maintenance …)
Great pictures too. Well done! 
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