Platinum Wedding Bands

Weight scales with volume, and a band's volume grows quickly as it gains width and thickness. Two extra millimetres across the face is a surprising quantity of additional metal once it is wrapped the whole way around a finger.

Platinum compounds that, because it is a far denser metal than gold. The same shape in the same dimensions carries noticeably more mass, and a hand registers the difference immediately.

The effect is strongest in the first week and weakest after a month, once the hand has adjusted to it. If the weight still reads as intrusive by then, it generally continues to.

Far less than a gold band of the same design. When platinum is abraded the displaced metal mostly stays on the ring, heaped up beside the mark rather than carried away by whatever caused it.

The visible result is a change of surface rather than a change of section. The band stops being bright and becomes softly textured, but the material is still there to be worked with.

Deep gouges from a genuine impact are another matter, and a ring that has been crushed or caught in machinery can lose metal properly. Ordinary wear and accidents are different things.

A thin layer of the surface. Polishing works by cutting the metal down past the bottom of the scratches, so the finish that comes back is a new surface rather than the old one cleaned up.

On platinum a good deal of what comes off is the displaced metal standing proud beside each mark, which is one reason the ring does not feel meaningfully lighter afterwards.

Repeated polishing across many decades does eventually soften a design's crisp details. Most bands take it many times over without any practical consequence at all.

Yes. Where a band has genuinely lost section, usually at the base where it sits against the palm, a bench jeweller can weld fresh platinum into the thin area and re-form the profile around it.

This is a repair rather than a polish, and it is priced accordingly. It is worth doing on a ring that carries sentiment and rarely worth doing on one that does not.

The alternative is a new shank: the worn lower half is cut away and replaced entirely, keeping the top of the band and any setting on it intact.

No. Two bands are worn on two different hands and are almost never seen touching each other, so nothing about the metals is obliged to agree.

People choose differently for practical reasons all the time. One hand may do work that argues for a particular weight or a particular profile while the other hand does not.

Where a pair is meant to read as a pair, matching the finish or the edge treatment does more visible work than matching the metal, because those are the details a photograph shows.

It can. Sizing removes or adds metal at the base of the ring, which is exactly where an inscription is usually cut, and the seam can run straight through the lettering.

A jeweller who knows the engraving is there will normally take a rubbing or a photograph first, work around the text where the change is small, and re-cut whatever is lost.

Mention an inscription before handing the ring over rather than afterwards. It changes how the job is planned and it changes what the finished ring looks like inside.

Usually, yes. A band is trued on a steel mandrel and tapped back to a circle, which is routine bench work rather than a major intervention.

It matters why it went oval. Grip pressure on a sound band is easily corrected. A band that deformed because it had already worn thin needs metal replaced before rounding is worth doing.

Bands set with stones the whole way round are the exception, because moving the metal disturbs the settings. Those are assessed one at a time.

Longer than a gold one, as a rule. Fewer workshops do platinum work in house, so the ring may travel, and laser welding is set-up work rather than something squeezed between other jobs.

A week to a fortnight is a reasonable expectation through a jeweller who sends work out, and less than that where the bench is on the premises.

Ask about the turnaround before leaving the ring rather than afterwards, particularly if there is a date attached to getting it back on the hand. A workshop that knows there is a deadline will usually say plainly whether it can be met.

A band with a flat face and a square edge meets a straight-shanked ring closely and holds it steady. It is the least fussy pairing and the easiest to replace at a later date.

A rounded edge is more forgiving against a ring whose shank is not straight, because the curve tolerates a small mismatch without opening a visible line between the two.

Whatever the shape, the two rings rub. Continuous contact is simply what happens on a finger, and it leaves its record on both of them.

Because the engagement ring's shank is not a plain cylinder. Most settings sit on a shank that rises, curves or divides as it approaches the stone, and a straight band cannot follow that line.

The gap is cosmetic rather than harmful, though it does let the two rings rock against one another and concentrate wear at the points where they meet.

A contoured band cut to the shape of that particular ring closes it. The trade-off is that the band is then matched to one ring and will not sit correctly against another.