Handcrafted vs Handforged

[maccers]

Hi everyone,
My SO is getting ready to order my Tacori e-ring and after perusing their site, I keep coming across the word 'hand-crafted' but I'm not clear what this means. Is hand crafted the same as hand forged or is it some variation of hand forging? This isn't a deal breaker by any means but I'd like to understand it, out of curiosity. And certainly it might explain the pricing on their settings!

 

[distracts]

I believe the ring is cast, then the stones are set and detailing is finished. This isn't hand-forging, but is more hand-made than settings that are cast in place, i.e., with the melee diamonds in the casting, or cast with engraving/milgraining on them.

 

[denverappraiser]

Forging is where you hit a piece of metal with a steel hammer against an anvil to shape it. That’s a short description of what can be a very complicated process but it’s fundamentally different from casting, where a mold is made to accept molten metal. Most things being sold as forged pieces are a combination of both, where they forge from a cast piece or they assemble a finished design using both forged and cast parts.

‘Hand’ made is a much more problematic term. Obviously there are tools involved and the question becomes how complicated a tool is acceptable. A hammer is ok, a robotic stamp press is not (that’s the way they make doorknobs and car doors and, as far as I know, no one claims these things are ‘handmade’). I’ve never seen a good definition of the line here and the manufactures take quite a bit of leeway when they call things handmade, hand assembled, hand forged, hand set, hand crafted, etc. At the end of the day, ask THEM what they mean by it. Some will be very precise in their answer and others it’ll be pure puffery.

Interestingly, in diamonds I’ve seen the opposite. Things get promoted as ‘machine cut’. Presumably this is to indicate that the ‘hand’ has been removed from the process and that’s a good thing. It’s identical malarkey but the other direction. Of course there are machines involved and of course there are humans involved. The difference seems to be largely in the way they’re advertised.