What are my options for sizing my ring? Especially if it is full eternity or has lots of gorgeous detail?

Featured in the picture to the right is a classic example of a ring that can be resized regularly. It doesn’t have any stones or detail that go all the way around. So what we do is at the very back of the ring, we carefully cut it.  Metal is either removed to make it a smaller size, or added to make it a larger size. It is carefully soldered back together, then cleaned and polished so you’ll never know it was even touched!

This is typically done with plain or low-detail bands that only need to be sized up a tiny bit. The ring is placed on a jeweler’s mandrel or in a special stretching machine, and gently stretched. Alternatively, we can shave a tiny bit of metal from the inside of the ring if it’s a thick ring, which will also give it a slightly bigger size.

Now we start to get into the more difficult resizing. Take a look at the wedding band and engagement ring to the right. The wedding band is a full eternity ring, and the engagement ring is half eternity but has the remaining metal shaped and polished to look like the diamonds go all the way around (a very clever, lower-cost illusion!). 

These are details that can get ruined in a regular sizing, where the ring is cut and soldered. One way to get around this is to put what is called a sizing patch. When the ring is cut, rather than trying to maintain or recreate the intricate detail (which almost never works perfectly), my husband makes the area that was sized smooth, creating the “patch” you can see on the rings pictured here. And since it’s at the bottom of the ring, where no one looks, no one is the wiser!

For those who don’t want to have a sizing patch, and need the ring sized down, this is a great option! The happy bride who owns the ring pictured to the right needed it sized down, but didn’t want the band to have a sizing patch. So my husband inserted carefully placed “beads” of metal on the inside of the band. Contrary to how they look, they are quite comfortable once you’ve gotten used to them! This is because they are carefully placed in the fleshiest part of the finger. Another plus is that they are not visible once the ring is on.

Did you know?

Sizing beads are also used for those who have knuckles that are much larger than the part of their finger that houses the ring. As a result, the ring must be made in a size that can fit over the knuckle, but then once it’s on the finger it tends to spin and flop. The sizing beads allow a larger ring size to fit over the knuckle, but then hold the ring in place once it’s on!

Sizing beads can also be used to stabilize rings that have very large center stones that want to flop side to side.