By taking even a small amount of care, jewelers can prevent a broken or damaged stone and maintain a sparkling reputation. Fortunately, they can be minimized with just a few simple precautions. In our more than 20 years as jewelers and appraisers, we've seen such incidents happen all too frequently. ![]() Jewelers must take care not to overheat corundum - or overlook a possible glass filling, or work near it with the wrong abrasive: Any of these steps could lead to embarrassing and costly mishaps. Nor is corundum able to withstand all temperatures. However, if a piece of jewelry is subjected to a torch and then rapidly quenched in pickle - a routine followed by hundreds of bench jewelers every day - corundum can crack like an ice cube, and so too can its aura of invincibility. And that's true many rubies and sapphires undergo these processes with little or no noticeable effect. It's widely accepted, for example, that corundum is one of the few stones other than diamond able to withstand the heat used to retip a prong or perform stone-in-place casting. Given the gem's reputation for toughness, jewelers sometimes take the strength of a sapphire or ruby for granted. Not surprisingly, many jewelers feel a comforting sense of security when faced with a ruby- or sapphire-set piece. ![]() ![]() With a hardness of 9 on the Mohs scale, these popular varieties of corundum have long been considered nearly impossible to damage, and they can easily withstand the melting point of even high karat gold solders (about 1,640 0F to 1,740 0F). By Julie Nash and Arthur Skuratowicz More from this authorĪsk any jeweler to list the gemstones with which they prefer to work, and sapphires and rubies would undoubtedly rank near the top.
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