The Twilight Oval

Maggie came to us with a screenshot from a competitor she could not afford and one sentence: "I want it to feel like dusk." Most briefs arrive longer than that and mean less. We settled on a 7x9mm oval moissanite held low on a slim 1.6mm band, with two faint pavé rails that catch light the way the last ten minutes of sunset do.

The oval is set east-west, because she wanted the long axis to run across the finger rather than up it. The head sits 4.1mm off the finger. Taller would have thrown light the way she liked and caught on every sleeve she owns. Eighteen 0.9mm rounds run the rails, nine per side, stopped 6mm shy of the sizing area so the ring can still be sized later without grinding stones out.

The first cast came back with porosity in the left shoulder, pinholes you could see at 10x but not with the eye. I could have polished them out and shipped it. We re-invested and cast again the next morning instead. Two days gone on a 5 week build.

Four 1.0mm round prongs draw over the girdle at 2 and 8 o'clock so the long sides of the oval stay open to light. Each tip was filed to a soft round and pre-polished before the stone went in. The gallery underneath is a pierced basket with three 1.2mm openings, cut by hand with a saw frame. It looks like very little. It is what keeps the underside from turning green in a year.

Finishing was tripoli on the band and rouge by hand on the head, which is 14k rose gold and takes a polish without going hazy. Five minutes in the ultrasonic, then a 10x check for fire scale at the rail ends and under the basket.

It shipped in 5 weeks. She sent a photo from the rooftop where he proposed. Two years on it came back for a polish because she bangs it on gym lockers, and we took the rails down 0.05mm to lift the dents.