Owning a fine jewelry piece is a sensitive matter as it requires continuous maintenance and upkeep. Even for people who take good care of their jewelry pieces, fading, metal fatigue, and erosion are among the common wears and tears you just can’t avoid.
To ensure the longevity of these precious items, jewelry repair businesses recommend bringing them in for inspection every six months. This not only renews your jewelry but also helps prevent future damages that can cost you more time and money. It’s no surprise that jewelry repair services account for 15% of the revenue and 60% of the traffic at jewelry stores.
In this post, we discuss the most common jewelry repairs and how the experts perform them. You will also learn a few extra tips to streamline the operations of your jewelry repair business using repair shop management software.
Cleaning and Polishing
For starters, let’s take a look at the most common jewelry repair process of them all – cleaning and polishing. With time, every jewelry item loses its shine due to dirt, oils, and other environmental effects. For instance, silver turns black over time as it reacts with the sulfur in the atmosphere.
That being said, jewelry owners are not willing to throw these exquisite pieces away when they lose their charm. Instead, they look for ways to bring the jewelry back to its former glory.
Cleaning and polishing is more of an art than a jewelry repair. It requires attention to detail and a high level of precision. Professional jewelry repair technicians ensure that the cleaning and restoration process does not take away from the originality of the precious items.
How it is Done
Modern jewelry repair shops use ultrasonic cleaners to carry out the process of cleaning and polishing. With a combination of ultrasonic sound waves, a cleaning solution, and heat, jewelry repair experts remove the dirt and grime from the intricate pieces.
Aqueous ammonia is the preferred cleaning solution for most jewelry repair businesses, thanks to its effectiveness in cleaning hard metals and gemstones. Scratches and smudges are buffed out using a special polishing cloth while carefully avoiding a rub on any gemstones nearby.
Suggested Read: Why RepairDesk is the Best Jewelry Repair Shop Management Software – RepairDesk Blog
Chain or Clasp Repair
Jewelry pieces like bracelets and necklaces are commonly worn all of the time, which makes them more vulnerable to damage. Chains and clasps often break due to regular use and render the necklace or bracelet unwearable. While some customers try to find ways to repair their jewelry on their own, this practice is not encouraged by the professionals.
You need to avoid using inferior materials in clasps and chain links so that the quality of your jewelry remains intact. For this reason, jewelry repair businesses follow a comprehensive repair process.
How Broken Links Are Repaired
First of all, jewelry repair experts carry out a visual inspection to identify bent and broken links. By running their fingers through the length of the chain, they can feel damaged links that need to be repaired.
You can use small pliers to remove the damaged links, and replace them with new links or jump rings. In cases where the chains are tangled, you need to straighten them out first. When it comes to necklaces, the most commonly used method to repair broken links is chain soldering. It involves the use of a soldering iron to fix the broken links.
Ring Resizing
Ring sizing or resizing is another very common jewelry repair that involves adjusting the band size of rings. Clearly, no jewelry owner would want their ring to be oversized or too tight. This kind of repair isn’t possible without going to a professional jewelry repair shop. The ideal ring size is when the ring can be easily taken on and ff your finger. It should require only the slightest wiggle to take it off.
Jewelry repair technicians can resize rings to half or a quarter of their size. The repair process involves cutting the ring from the shank, which is the bottom part of the band. Then, depending on the order, the technician either adds or removes a part of the metal from the ring.
When the right size is created, the metal is soldered to join the two sides together, which is then followed by shaping and polishing.
Shank Repair
Shanks do not only break when jewelers try to resize rings. There can be many reasons for breaking or fracturing the band part of a ring. Although it seems like a strong part of the ring, it can bend or break even in normal use. This repair is similar to resizing a ring. The shank is already broken, so the metal is soldered together, formed back into the correct size, then shaped, smoothed, and polished.
Considering the different kinds of inter-dependent jewelry repairs your jewelry store may come across, you need to have your operations aligned. For instance, if a shank repair is required and your repair shop does not identify it while taking the order, it might cause discrepancies later on.
RepairDesk is a jewelry repair shop software that helps streamline internal communications between employees and ensure your customers’ peace of mind. With its repair order tracking system, you can assign tickets to repair technicians and get updated about the order in real time.
Prong Repair
Where there are gemstones involved, there have got to be prong problems. Prongs are the small metal supports that hold a gemstone in place. With the passage of time, these get weak and may even break off.
When the top of a prong becomes flat or wears thin, you need to be careful as the gemstone may fall off. Even the smallest hit may cause the metal to break. Before starting the repairs, professional jewelry repair businesses assess the damage of the prong.
For instance, if the prong has weared off, they add more metal to make it stronger. However, if it is completely broken, they need to solder on a new piece of metal. The process requires maximum precision and must only be carried out by trained professionals.
Get Your Business Shining
The modern business world demands excellent customer service and a highly organized operational structure. Whether your jewelry repair business is based out of a single store, a mail-in jewelry repair depot, or an enterprise, RepairDesk is your best bet at making it big. RepairDesk’s POS software for jewelry repair shops keeps you updated with real time analytics while your employees are able to enhance their productivity with the ticket management feature.
