A Day in the Life of a Bench Jeweler

March 9th, 2020

Have you ever wondered what our bench jeweler does all day? Does she sit downstairs & eat goldfish, while machinery does all her work for her? (she does love goldfish!) Does she just play with fire all day? (Kinda!) Does she do all of our repair work or just some of it? (all of it!) Does she do custom work? (Yep!)

Julia, our bench jeweler, has been with us for 8 years and she’s a real person with real talent! Your jewelry never leaves our store and is handled by an expert crafts(wo)man!

Julia arrives each morning between 9 and 9:30 am and works through the business day. She has weekends off (unless we are really busy!) and works a typical 40 hour-a-week schedule. Depending on the day, she could complete anywhere from 2-12 repair jobs depending on their complexity. Sometimes she might work on a custom ring for an entire work day or she might focus entirely on jewelry repair jobs which typically require less time. Each repair job that comes through our store gets assigned a due date so she has to manage her work flow in order to get jobs done in a timely manner. We always want a satisfied customer and if we can get their job done a few days before we promised them, that’s an extra bonus!

The most common repair jobs Julia completes are ring re-sizing, replacing or straightening tips (to keep your stones secure!), Rhodium treatments (done to white gold rings to improve luster and shine) and tightening of loose stones. But she also completes more complex repair jobs and creates complete custom pieces!

At her bench, she completes jewelry repair jobs that require heat. Most repair jobs require heating of gold or silver to re-size or re-tip. However, some stones such as cubic zirconia, opal, pearls and some other softer gemstones will crack or break under such high temperatures. With heat sensitive stones, Julie will either remove the stone before completing the repair work or use the laser machine. What’s a laser machine used for? Laser welding allows precious metals and many other alloys to be joined together without the use of solder or torches. A very precise laser of heat is applied to jewelry as opposed to a torch heating technique that has a much larger radius of heat. The laser machine allows us to repair jewelry with more sensitive stones or metal types.

We are so grateful for everything our bench jeweler, Julia, is able to do to bring back your jewelry to “like new” condition. If you want to see her in action, sizing a ring, check out this video.

Written by Carly Lambert

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