first timer needs help

[lucky_charms_guy]

Greetings PSers,

I''ve been lurking for a week or two, trying to "learn me" some stuff about diamonds so I can get my gf a nice diamond and propose to her. Her and her family highly recommend a small mom & pop jeweler that is local to her mom (about 1.5 hours away) and I was hoping to use him to make my purchase. I did want to do some research before driving out to his store though, and started checking out this forum as well as checking pricing on some internet vendors. I''ve narrowed down my criteria and budget but I am concerned that for the same price, I may only be able to purchase a 1.1ct diamond of the same quality from the jeweler, when I was hoping for around a 1.3ct for some of the stones I had seen online.

I didn''t get too specific with the stones he was speaking of, I plan on doing that in a week and a half when I visit his store. At that point I can certainly look at the numbers and do a better comparison and see what extra percentage I am paying to have the convenience of dealing with a B&M jeweler.

Here is my main issue though:
My gf has extremely large knuckles in comparison to her fingers. She was previously engaged, and her old ring had to have a special mechanism that allowed the ring over the knuckle, yet still kept it from moving around once on her finger. I don''t know the name of it, but it was not the sizing beads and not the arthritic mechanism. The local jeweler is the one who made the previous one, and he did trial and error a few times in order to get it to fit just right.

If I feel like I am paying too much (or having to give up too much) just to use the local jeweler, I was hoping to just buy the stone and ring from the online vendor. I had asked the jeweler if he would install/switch over whatever mechanism he used on the rpevious ring to the new ring. He said he was not interested in doing that. I then asked if I bought the loose stone online, if he would set the stone and put the mechanism on the new band, and he said he wasn''t willing to do that either - presumably because it was not worth it for him to do that since he is not making a profit from the stone.

Any suggestions on how to proceed? Best case scenario is local jeweler''s pricing is close to internet pricing and I can just do everything through him. If not, and if I don''t feel like minimizing the bang for my buck, is it likely I can find another jeweler to either set the loose stone with this mechanism, or would the online vendor be able to do that and give me my finished product if I maybe helped provide them info (I should be able to get my hands on the old ring if needed). I was looking at Union, but might check out other vendors as well. I had found one that fit my criteria perfectly so far, but I think it sold over the weekend...

 

[lucky_charms_guy]

I think what she had done on her previous ring is called a spring ring guard. Is this something that the online vendors could provide? Is this something I could expect most B&M jewelers would be able to install and maybe this one is just saying no in an effort to try to get me to buy the stone from him? Will there be any issue if I need to return the ring to the online vendor if it has been modified with the spring guard?

Any advice would be appreciated.

Thank you.

 

[Lula]

If you can get the old setting, my guess is that a couple of the online diamond vendors here who also do custom settings --

Wink Jones at High Performance Diamonds
Brian Gavin (do a Google search for his name to find his new website)
Whiteflash

-- to name a few, can probably reproduce the mechanism (unless the jeweler who made the setting patented the mechanism).

I would get the old setting, take some good digital photos of it, and contact those vendors I listed above (see "Diamond Vendors" in the drop-down box in the "Resources" section of the toolbar above for contact info) and ask them. I'm not sure if Union Diamond does custom settings, but you could always ask them.