|
||||||||||||
Setting the stones
is done by hand,
carefully setting the stones into the detailed and polished blank... This has traditionally been the highest paid skill in the manufacturing shop (and the reason I chose that specialty twenty five years ago :)....
I employ highly experienced and highly skilled stone setters, because so much is on the line every day, every job. I don't like suprises. I've found while others are quick to reduce overhead by employing lower skilled workers I value consistancy and the value of experience setter's at the benchs...
Finely detailing the stone setting
is a careful hand process, using skill and experience to navigate the ring into being a finely crafted item ready to survive in the real world... There's so much shit in the mall store's cases that's designed to last about as long as the check takes to clear that we want our products to stand out because of their attention to detail, secure stone setting and basic sound design.
We make sure the item is just right, if a stone is chipped it is replace... We even guarantee all of our products for a year against any material or manufacturing defect. No excuses jewelry is what we're all about...
Client
Previews 
carefully setting the stones into the detailed and polished blank... This has traditionally been the highest paid skill in the manufacturing shop (and the reason I chose that specialty twenty five years ago :)....
I employ highly experienced and highly skilled stone setters, because so much is on the line every day, every job. I don't like suprises. I've found while others are quick to reduce overhead by employing lower skilled workers I value consistancy and the value of experience setter's at the benchs...
Finely detailing the stone setting is a careful hand process, using skill and experience to navigate the ring into being a finely crafted item ready to survive in the real world... There's so much shit in the mall store's cases that's designed to last about as long as the check takes to clear that we want our products to stand out because of their attention to detail, secure stone setting and basic sound design.
We make sure the item is just right, if a stone is chipped it is replace... We even guarantee all of our products for a year against any material or manufacturing defect. No excuses jewelry is what we're all about...
We've learned quite a bit today!...So you start with a basic idea, you refine the idea and turn it into a planned working drawing, you expertly render a custom wax, you invest the wax with plaster, you burn the wax out over time, you cast the molten metal into the flask, you file and lovingly emery the surfaces, you detail and pre-polish the entire blank mounting, you set the stones into the mounting carefully by hand & the polisher takes the item to the finished and delivery stages, ready for billing and transport to the ultimate customer.
There's no magic here, just experience and hard work to make sure that the articles you work on are as good as they can be. From the working drawing thru the finishing process each step depends upon the last step being done correctly, miss any step or screw up any step and you find yourself in dangerous waters. Sort of like baseball "If you don't touch all the bases it ain't no home run!" The quality is either in the item or it's not, there are no excuses in manufacturing except you can't do the work... There's many shops out there who couldn't even get a base hit!
Seriously
though, it's so common for custom made items to be done so poorly that
I hope this series of shop pages will help you to realize that quality
is not gone, it's mearly relocated to Oregon, and is alive and well at
Associate Jewelers Incorporated. It lives other places too, where skilled
individuals do their best daily, where quality is why they get up in the
morning.... Where the entire staff takes great pride in the combined efforts
of all, and appreciates being widely associated with quality products
and professional results... It's results which count in the real world...
It's
either done right, or it isn't....Excuses don't cut it in the real world, there's always a reason why someone couldn't do their best, and frankly I just get tired of those sorts of individuals, and I won't employ them either!
Good jewelry is rare these days, as a percentage of the "stuff" being sold... I actually like the fact that most jewelry is poorly designed and constructed because it keeps my staff of benchworkers busy fixin' what has fallen apart... It's also nice to have stuff like this to compare our products to, the gap between commercial jewelry and our finely crafted products tends to make my customers very dependant upon our services :) We like that very much!
When you're tired of all the high prices, and the
poor quality, give me a call :)We are always happy to work with people who know what they want, unfortunately the down side is that we don't have 6 hours to stand at a retail counter and babble though.
If you haven't ordered our master wax catalog yet you darned well better hurry, these suckers are going faster than glasses of lemonaid in the desert... I printed a second thousand of these, and they are still going to eventually run out... But regardless, I just wanted you to know that there's at least one professional wholesale jewelry tradeshop still around, one that puts quality above any other concern... ...a tradeshop who values your reputation, and has established their own reputation for quality and performance, not excuses...
