Split Decisions
Brody Rice’s platinum, rose gold, and diamond floral ring
By Tina Snyder
After making a ring for his wife with a split shank design, Brody Rice of Brody Rice Designs in Stevens Point, Wisconsin, wanted to use the concept for this floral ring. Crafted with a jewelry design competition in mind, the platinum and 14k rose gold ring features 140 round brilliant-cut accent diamonds totaling 2.87 carats with a 2.02 carat center diamond.
“This ring did kind of test my patience,” admits Rice, who started working on its design in the fall of 2019. “Just finding time to mentally focus on the piece was difficult, but COVID-19 gave me the gift of time to work out the design details and how to produce some of the challenging parts of the ring.”
Rice designed the upper halo setting in CAD in three parts and milled them in wax. The top and bottom pieces are hollow, while the section sandwiched in between is a ring just thick enough for setting diamonds around its edge. “If this was all solid, it would weigh a ton in platinum and the casting may not be as successful, so I kept it really light,” says Rice.
Once the three wax components were milled, he fused them by heat welding along the top and bottom edges of the center ring. He then fused the platinum part of the shank to the completed halo setting. He created and cast two wax components for the 14k rose gold “wings.”
The obvious benefit to fusing the components together in wax versus metal is a cleaner finished product. “You can’t see the seam in the halo top after I set the stones along the side of it,” he says.
He shipped the finished wax to his caster, but was dismayed when the package was lost in the mail. “I had to make the model all over again, but eventually the original found its way to the caster,” he says.
With the gorgeous platinum casting and the 14k cast pieces back in his possession, Rice was on to the next challenges of stone setting and assembly. He began by doing a preliminary sanding and polishing of the cast components. Next, he set 0.01 carat diamonds along the edge of the ring top and then set the diamonds in a circular pattern on the top. The 0.06 carat stones surround the central diamond, followed by a ring of 0.01 carat diamonds and another ring of 0.04 carat diamonds.
After he set the diamonds, he soldered the rose gold pieces to the platinum shank. For Rice, this is one of the standout aspects of the design. “The shank really ‘presents’ the top of the ring, with the triangular shape of the wings splitting through and holding the top up like a pedestal.”
The challenge came in the form of heat shrinkage when soldering rose gold to platinum. “The platinum expanded more than I anticipated and fractured the rose gold a bit, so I had to fix that after soldering,” he says, noting that he flowed solder into the rose gold cracks.
The final polish of the nooks and crannies of the split shank design was tricky. Rice says a design like this requires careful planning and pre-polishing of the components so there is minimal polishing required once the piece is assembled. “It’s tough getting the tools into the crisscrossing areas of the shank, hitting the spots you want and avoiding those you don’t.”
Ultimately, the planning and patience was well worth the effort. The result is a beautiful piece worthy of a design competition entry down the road.