With regular use, chain links will wear through eventually. If a thin and delicate chain has a heavy pendant, this will cause it to wear out faster. Certain types of chain are also less resilient due to their design. Two prime examples are the Rolo and hollow link chains, which are popular due to their affordability, but do not last nearly as long as their solid link equivalents and are difficult to repair effectively. If a chain keeps breaking at different points after being repaired, the best option is to replace it and trade in the old chain for credit.

There is always a chance that claws or prongs around a stone will catch on clothing. They may not have been tightened enough originally or may have loosened slightly with wear and tear. Once they start catching on clothing, it is likely they will gradually be opened up more and more over time. Fortunately, claws can generally be tightened fairly easily. Click here for more information on repairs and restoration.

It is extremely difficult to get anywhere near the true value of a second hand piece of jewellery, especially when it comes to gold and precious stones. Most often you will have to settle for the scrap value or find a dealer who will sell it on commission. The best advice would be to have the ring inspected, cleaned and valued, then to sell it directly to an individual who’d be buying it for themselves at a discounted price. Another way to make the most of what you have is to use your old jewellery as the materials to create new pieces. This is far more cost effective than selling your old pieces and buying new metal and stones.

It is a very common question and some people even believe that diamonds become dull with age. While most precious and semi-precious stones, such as Emeralds and Cubics just to take two contrasting examples, will eventually become scratched and pitted with age, this is very seldom the case with Diamonds. More often than not, the cause is actually incredibly simple…it’s just dirt. Hand creams, oils, soap residue and makeup are just some of the things that can build up in and around settings and dull the shine of your stones. A good and thorough cleaning should do the trick and we offer cleaning and polishing of jewellery.

It is important to remember than most silver jewellery is Sterling silver (just like pure gold, pure/fine silver is too soft to be used for jewellery in general) and sterling silver will oxidize over time. However, if your sterling silver jewellery is turning black within a matter of days or weeks, there are several reasons why this might be happening. Sea air and salt water causes silver to oxidize faster, much like how cars at the seaside are prone to rust. An acidic environment will also cause sterling silver to tarnish quickly and not only are certain skin products slightly acidic, but it could also indicate that your body’s pH is lower than it should be. By contrast, people with a higher body pH, tend to find their sterling silver tarnishes very little.

You can and you should. While the mirror smooth shine of new jewellery is something that only a full polish will restore, regular cleaning will make a world of difference to your jewellery. You can easily remove built up dirt or oil by immersing your jewellery in a solution of hot water and sunlight soap (not so hot that you can’t put your hand in it) and very gently scrubbing the piece with a toothbrush. However, it is important to note that this is may not be safe for certain stones such as opal, tanzanite or pearls and should also not be used for any jewellery which has stones or pearls that are glued in place. For these pieces, a long soaking in cool water and a very gentle scrubbing will have to suffice. you can buy jewellery cleaning solutions, usually in the form of a dip, but do note that these are solely for removing tarnish and oxides and should only be used after the jewellery has been cleaned of dirt as described above.

Gold plating will always wear off eventually, it is important to acknowledge this. Items such as rings and chains will typically be the first to wear through their plating, whereas earrings are generally less exposed to wear and so last longer. By and large, gold plated jewellery is not suitable for everyday wear, unless you are prepared to have it replated or replaced frequently. The best way to make plated pieces last is to wear them only for more ‘elegant’ occasions and to limit the amount of wear and tear they are subjected to. They should be cleaned very gently and cannot be polished like solid gold jewellery without removing the gold plating in the process.

Rhodium is a rare and precious metal, more expensive than either gold or platinum, with a bright white colour like polished sterling silver and which doesn’t tarnish. However, due to the cost, it is seldom used to make jewellery. Rather Rhodium plating is used to give white gold jewellery an added brilliance by laying down a thin coat of bright white Rhodium which masks the yellow undertone of most white gold alloys. High end sterling silver jewellery may also be Rhodium plated to prevent it from tarnishing. As with all metal plating though, it does wear off in time.

In many respects this is a matter of taste or budget. On the one hand, 9ct gold tends to be harder and so more durable than 18ct. However, the higher the purity of a gold alloy, the deeper and richer its colour will be, especially for yellow and rose coloured alloys. While pure gold famously does not tarnish, one should also remember that most jewellery is not made from pure gold and the higher copper content of 9ct gold relative to 18ct gold can cause it to tarnish and change colour subtly over time.

Pure gold is 24ct and is a deep yellow colour, but it is too soft to make durable jewellery. Therefore, we alloy it down to 18ct or 9ct by mixing it with various other metals (alloys). Every country and each refinery uses different recipes and different alloys to create the desired colours; yellow, rose or white. Some of these recipes produce gold which is not suitable for reworking, often because it is too brittle to shape by hand. However, as goldsmiths we would only know if gold is usable or not once we actually try to work with it. In this case it is best to use new gold and trade the old gold in for credit or to have it refined to pure gold and then re-alloyed to exactly the colour and grade desired (this does of course come with an added cost).

If goldsmithing was that easy, we wouldn’t do it and nobody would be interested. Any repair that involves adding or reattaching metal, requires heating the entire piece up to red heat to then solder the two pieces together. Because most gemstones cannot handle open flame, we either have to remove any gemstones from the piece or protect them from the heat according to their individual properties. Soldering on an old piece is a balancing act of getting the new solder to flow, while not allowing any old solder joints to come undone. And finally, heating up to red heat creates fire scale in sterling silver and a layer of oxides in gold, which then have to be carefully cleaned and polished away.