Ring Resizing
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From conversation with my jeweller friend:
"Resizing a ring to make it larger rarely involves making a cut. Usually it would be stretching on a special ring stretcher which exerts mechanical force which can also be combined with heat for more dramatic resizing.
With a comfort fit ring it can be possible to resize it large enough by merely removing part or all of the comfort fit.That's basically a resounding "No".
Resizing a ring to make it smaller would involve removing as much of the comfort fit as possible and then sleeving the inside of the ring with a new single piece of titanium, which then has to be filed back into the comfort fit shape."
What I take from this is that it's not going to be possible (or even cost effective) to dramatically resize the ring in either direction, or to resize it upwards more than by filing down the comfort fit. The combination of the heat and mechanical pressure involved with stretching would be a no-no with electronics in the inlays, not even considering whether the ring would stretch under the inlays first where the metal is thinner and leave gaping holes at the edges of the inlays.
I have a couple of completely dead rings that came to me as QA visual fails and simply didn't work at all, so I might send one over to him and let him experiment on resizing it. It's not a serious thing though, I'm guessing the cost involved would be at least double that of simply buying another ring. (and is only really useful with the Titanium only rings. PVD would be ruined pretty quickly in the process.)
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@Lokki Great piece of info thanks! I was looking into make the ring smaller, but even the process of custom fabricating a piece of comfort fit titanium sleeve into the ring after altering it does sound expensive. I may get a quote from a jeweler just to get an idea of cost, but I agree that there's a high probability that the price may not merit the effort and may as well just go through the long process of returning it or purchasing another ring. Thanks for the help guys!
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@MikeInSeattle, no worries mate, glad it helped - I had been meaning to chat to my jeweller friend for a while now, so it was a good reminder to do that. (I'd been avoiding it because my lazy ass owes him a prototype to design a case for.)
One thing I forgot to point out is that I have no idea how much of the comfort fit portion is solid and how filing it down for either method would affect things like inlay or absorber tuning.
Not a recommened process! (Though I will be interested to see how he goes with the dead ring.) -
I have a close friend who is a custom jeweler designer and creator....titanium is really an issue for the process, I was talking about ( or trying to) in my above past.
The heating /cooling the ring, cutting and shrinking all would be fairly disastrous for the Tags to remain functioning.
Perhaps some of the polymer ( it is purple in color) that could be molded might allow a small ring to be wrapped around the ring to allow the ring to stay the same size but fit a smaller finger. Ill sketch something together and post it here tomorrow.
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I am trying to attach drawn picture so I can visually show people what I was talking about...the mold-able silicone polymer called "sugru" IIRC and it is mold-able, and might just stick to the ring.
Sugruhow would I attach a pic to this post?
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@Zackis Thanks for the response! See here for inline images:
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I asked a jeweler about resizing a ring down to a smaller size, especially given the delicate nature of this ring. She had two recommendations: a bridge (which may not require any soldering) and beads.
A bridge is merely a piece of metal that kind of wraps around the inside of the ring to add additional material, thus causing the ring to fit better. Some bridges can be soldered to the ring, others are simply wrapped around the material and are not permanent. Her recommendation was to obviously use the non-permanent bridge to avoid damaging the outer protective layer. It would work something like this:
Her other recommendation was the beads. These are little balls that are soldered to the inside of the ring to, again, take up more room, thus making the ring feel tighter. She says that due to the spot soldering, it would likely not damage the inlays (she thinks) or the outer protective layer. Of course this is risky because we don't really know how much short-term direct heat the inlays can take from a soldering job like that. Her recommendation for beads is to solder them directly underneath the non-inlay parts of the ring, to prevent possible damage to the inlays. It would work something like this:
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Both good ideas there, though the bridge looks like the best one!
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@asbath I tried the bridge from a local jeweler and I can say that it is surprising comfortable. My ring is just one size too big so the ring doesn't look too unnatural on the finger. If feels like wearing baggy legged jeans with a fitted waist: loose but secure. I did need to pad the part where it touches the finger since it didn't feel as comfortable as the comfort fit portion of the ring. Thanks!
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@MikeInSeattle said:
@asbath I tried the bridge from a local jeweler and I can say that it is surprising comfortable. My ring is just one size too big so the ring doesn't look too unnatural on the finger. If feels like wearing baggy legged jeans with a fitted waist: loose but secure. I did need to pad the part where it touches the finger since it didn't feel as comfortable as the comfort fit portion of the ring. Thanks!
I'm glad that it works for you! I'm thinking that I may need to get a bridge, too, as I've been losing weight and getting thinner... and my fingers are following suit.
I should have also mentioned that the jeweler indicated that you can ask them to give you a slightly larger bridge so that they can bend it, making it flush with the inside of the ring's curvature. This would make it more comfortable and has zero chance of "getting loose", so to speak, over time since there is no room for bending the bridge.
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so Lokki, what was the result of the jeweler trying to resize? i need to go up a size or two
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@imscuba , sorry, I must have missed this post - thanks for reminding me, I had completely forgotten about this.
End results were all bad, with the removal of the comfort fit resulting in a much weaker ring and displacement of the inlay.
In order to fit the inlay in that portion of the ring is significantly thinner than a normal piece of jewellery would be.
So no, on both smaller and larger.
