Designing and Making Custom Wedding Bands?

dystrophy asks: "I'm planning on getting married shortly after I graduate in December. Because I'm a student who doesn't work much, I don't have tons of money to spend on an engagement ring/wedding band. After discussing this situation with friends and family, I discovered that poverty is the great equalizer. My parents designed their own wedding bands and had them cast for relatively little money because they inherited diamonds and gold from their family. Because of finances, they decided to forgo the engagement ring and spend what they had on wedding bands. I have some decent quality diamonds and gold from my family. I haven't talked to my "wife to be" about the engagement ring yet (touchy topic), but she might be willing to go with a simple engagement ring, or just put the money toward a wedding band. I have just started doing research on the topic of designing rings. I have talked to several jewelry designers in the Bay Area, but they don't want to deal with me. They want to sell me their diamonds and gold (I've heard various and interesting excuses from each). How should I go about this? Where should I go? When it comes down to the design, should I just work with my wife-to-be to create sketches to give a designer, or is something more needed? Any really cool ideas and designs for wedding bands?"

Comments

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[sdirector]

I designed a wedding ring for my wife when we were living in Seattle. I found a custom jewelry place, and they used the gold and diamond from her engagement ring. I came in with pictures/sketches of *sorta* what I wanted (I'm not a jewelry designer) and then they had their designer make a mock up in wax, which they used to make the mold for the gold ring. My wife loved the ring, and it is much more special for the time and attention... we are also guaranteed that no one else has one just like it. :)

If you are looking for cheap�

[(H)elix1]

Buy a second hand ring. They seem to have almost no resale value what so ever.... There are way to may folks out there who spent mad cash on an engagement ring and had things go sour. Their loss, your win. Do your homework, however, and it might not be in your best interest to say it came from some dead lady's estate auction or Bob's pawn shop. Sounds like your time is cheap. Take the time to know when and what a good deal is...

Second, look for the combo engagement / wedding set. A simple 1/3 carrot diamond will save much heartache later. I'd say buy a modest CZ and swap the gem later, but that has critical fumble written all over it. You can always upgrade the gem later in life, but odds are she wont. (You will end up purchasing other jewelry later in life, however...)

Lastly, get yourself a plain wedding band. Keep it simple, second hand preferred.

artists that do jewelry

[BigBir3d]

When my Dad passed away, my Mom had the 3 rings (engagement, his/hers wedding bands) melted down and made into a custom ring using the diamond from the engagement ring. The guy that did the work (Phoenix AZ) is an artist that specializes in jewelry, not a jeweler that does custom work. You couldn't buy the stones or the metal (gold silver whatever) from him. His work was flawless, and my Mom will be forever happy with the ring. And he did not charge jewelers prices, in fact we were all surprised how inexpensive it was, considering the obvious quality.

Remember, gold usually can only me formed once or twice before surface pitting becomes a issue. Make sure any "used" gold is not a re-formed ring.

--

On a side note, if you can't talk to your fiance about the engagement ring because its a "touchy subject" she may not be the one for you. Common interests and understanding speak volumes.

Good luck. :)

Re:artists that do jewelry

[Anonymous Coward]

Remember, gold usually can only me formed once or twice before surface pitting becomes a issue.

This is, of course, completely wrong. Practically every ounce of gold out there has been melted and formed more times than you can count. We're not pulling gold out of the ground by the ton, you know! That's why it's expensive!

Here's whatcha do. Go to Canada and visit their national mint. Yeah, yeah, I know. Canada: pfft, whatever. But seriously, their national mint makes the finest gold coins in the world. Those guys have forgotten more about gold than you or I will ever know. Ask them if surface pitting is a problem!

And while you're there, bring me back some of them fancy new $20 pieces. Them's preeeety.

Combine engagement and wedding ring...

[stefanlasiewski]

My wife and I got engaged a few years ago, and we didn't have much money. We didn't have much money either, but we did get diamonds from different sections of our family. Not high quality diamonds, but I'd take family heirlooms over commercial diamonds any day.

We couldn't afford two rings, so we designed a single ring that had two parts: An engagement band that had a few diamonds on it which she wore for a year, and a wedding band that fit around the engagement band. It cost far less then two different rings.

They want to sell me their diamonds and gold

You may not be able to use your own gold.

Most jewelers are very picky about their gold quality, and don't want to run into the chance of your gold being less pure, and thus harder to work with (Big deal with working with small details).

We ended up selling some of our gold to the jewler that made our ring, for around the jewler-market price (which is less then what you see in Wall Street Journal).

However, I do know that there are jewelers (mostly smaller shops) who would use your gold. Just be persistent.

When it comes down to the design, should I just work with my wife-to-be to create sketches to give a designer, or is something more needed?

I'm a big fan of feminism: Equal rights, and equal responsibility :). It's not very romantic, but you and your wife-to-be should design the ring together. It's going to be on her finger, and she probably cares about the design more then you anyways, so she should have input.

As for how to choose a jeweler, the guy who designed her ring was nice, but slow, so we won't recommend him. However, we really liked these two places:

- There's another place on College Ave. in Berkeley or Oakland called "The Family Jules" or something. They were our second choice for my ring, and they had alot of rings for women also.

- I really liked the family who did my ring. I got a rose-gold keltic-style band at MacManus and Sons on Shattuck in Berkeley. They are very well known (especially in the Geek community), and I've had a number of people comment on their high quality and friendly store. Mr. MacManus is a nice guy, and he cleans and fixes my ring for free.

My wife and I had 4 sketches, we took it to several jeweler, and had them draw out a better sketch. We chose our jewler based on price, design and personality. However, I wouldn't recommend him to anyone, because he was slow.

We talked to 4 different artists. Two of them were recommended by friends, and the other two were selling their pretty goods at the Ren Faire.

Computer Designed Wedding Bands

[echo]

We had our wedding bands made here in Little Rock, AR at a place called "Cecil's Fine Jewelry"... We took in a sketch and the guy designed them using a CAD-like program specifically designed for ring design.. He would render shots of the rings and email us the results.. The the CAD file was shipped to California somewhere and was carved on a computer controlled milling machine. This resulted in a wax version of the rings. Then it was a simple thing to cast the real rings from the wax one by making molds, etc.

Here's a computer rendering of the rings.
Rendering

Here's the final rings.
Real Rendering

Re:Save money, save yourself.

[dystrophy]

Sorry, should have made it more clear. We're not engaged yet, thus the reason for it being a touchy topic.... We have discussed engagement and decided on no longer than 6 mo. When that time comes around, then we'll talk about the rings.

I've been in love with this girl for more than 10 years (and still in love with her, and she with me, after 2 years of dating), so I'm SURE she's the one.

-darren

Get a job, get the diamond

[bill_mcgonigle]

Unless your girlfriend is unusual (in a good way, perhaps) she wants a nice big diamond. She wants to show it to her friends and her friends want to see it. If her friends don't see it they'll think you're a creep. It's been explained to me as a 'deposit'.

Yep, stupid social traditions, but there they are.

If you want to avoid supporting DeBeers, get a second-hand diamond, they're "forever", remember? If you're picky, you'll have to get new (I wanted a brilliant cut VVSI G .75 with a blue phosphorescence and depth and table percentages right around 60 [do your homework, everyone tells my wife her diamond is the most sparkly they've seen, but it's just cut right and not from the department store], so I didn't have much luck locally) but you can save about half from buying from a direct importer from Isreal (where they cut most diamonds). I had good luck with these folks.

For the Wedding bands, we did well at Sam's Club. Simple gold bands can be had for about $50 each, I think we splurged for the $70 variety. But the wedding band isn't important, there's a ceremony coincident with them which is far more important. There's no engagement ceremony though, so the engagement ring is very important.