Tension Setting Engagement Ring, Tension Setting ?
Q.I am about to order a setting for an engagement ring, and was offered by my jeweler a tension setting, something he says is modern, fashionable and extremely robust in everyday wear. I admit it looks good and am planning to order one . The question is about the last claim - from the look of it, the diamond simply hangs there, q squeezed by the two golden "studs". Is it true that this type of setting is more practical, in a sense that it is less likely to open and the stone to get lost then the usual setting? After all, gold is pretty soft, right? So what stops it from bending a few microns, just enough for the stone stone to fall out? Also, if I were to go with the tension setting, should I get 14Kt gold instead of 18Kt I originally planned, so that the material would not be as soft and less likely to bend?
A.Only 2 studs? I thought there were supposed to be more than 4, so that if one loosened the stone would not fall out? Then again, I'm fairly clue- less and trying to figure stones and settings myself. I've never heard of a tension setting. What is it? I thought the actual setting/basket the diamond sits it was made of a white metal, stronger than gold, in order to make the diamond reflect more. (Unless its a yellowish diamond in which case you want a yellow setting.) A friend of mine has an 18Kt band on her engagement ring with a white basket (in a stronger metal) for the diamond. She has no problems with the 18Kt band. Then again, she has about .75 carats of diamond chips set in the band and she lost 1 chip and needed it replaced and the ring is only about 6 months old. I don't know if this has anything to do with the 18Kt gold or not. She also has a 14 Kt. wedding band and there is a slight color difference if she points it out. I think they bought the wedding bands separate from the engagement ring, so ended up with 14Kt. bands on the wedding rings and an 18Kt. band on the engagement ring. She doesn't mind the slight difference. I don't think it matters which one you get, 14Kt or 18 Kt. Pick the one with the color and price you like best. I do think its better if you get all bands the same though, but YMMV of course. The "tension ring" is quite specifically a design developed by Stephen Kretchmer, a very fine jeweler and metalurgist in (I think) Los Angeles. Stephen's well known for his mastery of things like multicolored golds (blue patinas, brown golds, mokume work in golds, and the like), and among his other interesting work, is sufficiently skilled and schooled in metalurgy to be able to design his alloys to be heat treated (age hardened), or to otherwise have sufficient hardness and stiffness to be able to be made into "tension ring" designs without loosing the stone. Since he did not actually copyright or patent his designs, he has several imitators. One guy, who seems to be right up the street from him judging by his full page ad in JC-K, even goes so far as to call his stuff the "tension collection" or some such crap, listing himself as the designer. As far as I'm concerned, anything of that sort other than Steven Kretchmers original designs, is a cheap knock off. It's always possible that some other jeweler might have duplicated the metalurgical work that makes Steven Kretchmer's pieces work, but you have no way to be sure of that. He's done these designs in platinum and various golds, but they all share the research, and special metalurgical qualities of being heat treatable, or otherwise manufactured with sufficient stiffness to provide sufficient tension for sucurity of the stones. This is not the norm for the usual platinum and gold alloys in general use. Frankly, I've not had a great deal of personal contact with these rings, so I can't advise you on their actual durability. If it were me, I'd trust the platinum ones, and have some slight reservations on the gold. But that's just a guess. I do know that I'd insist on the Kretchmer pieces, and not trust the knockoffs. Kretchmer has a reputation for high standards of craftsmanship, and I'd expect his pieces to perform as promised. It's easy enough to duplicate the look of these pieces. The functional durability is a whole other ball game entirely. And besides the question of durability, who wants a piece by a manufacturer who doesn't even have the integrity to do his own design work, but has to steal other folks ideas, and then has the gall to call it the same thing? As I have heard the tension setting is not perfect. All good and well if the stone - in this case diamond - is cleavage free but what if it isn't? Then you have the possibility that the stone may crack in the future because of the enormous tension it undergoes. And yes there have been cases of such incidents. It looks darn nice and modern but it is enormously risky. I guess if you like living risky, it must be exciting but then again a diamond is not always forever... About the gold. Well yes gold is soft but because of adding other metals such copper, silver,... it is much harder. Of course the perfect and sturdiest metal is still platinum IMHO and it makes the diamond look whiteras well. You're thinking of a normal prong setting. The tension setting is more like a channel, except there's nothing really holding the channel together, and the only part of the channel there is the two walls. Picture a large finger ring sized jump ring. Make it real heavy, like perhaps 3 mm round platinum wire. Don't close the open part of the jump ring, but leave it as an open gap. Cut a notch into each facing wall of the gap, slip a diamond into the notches, and close the jump ring a little more. Except this is a finger ring sized piece of metal. Got it so far? Now you've got a diamond, suspended in the two notches between the sides of the gap, with no support between the two sides, and only the tension in the shank portion of the ring preventing the whole affair from loosening up. It can look really spectacular. But as I indicated in my other post on the subject, the only way a thing like that has any chance of surviving securely is if the metal has been given enough hardness and spring to be able to maintain it's shape and some at least slight spring pressure on the diamond. Normal gold and platinum alloys are not usually up to the task, at least not if cast. Stephen Kretchmer is good enough with metalurgy to be able to predictably heat treat or otherwise custom formulate his alloys to meet that challenge. If anyone else around were to make the claim, I'd doubt it. But Steves rather a unique person. If he says he's made it work, I tend to believe him... And until he publishes his exact formulas and procedures, or someone else systematically does so in a good scientific and public manner, I'm not likely to trust the imitations of his work.
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