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Found jewelry condition

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Detectingman

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Joined
Jul 31, 2017
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Ok this is sort of a noob question.

Today I found my first gold ring, ladies 10K! Very happy to say the least. It rang up as aluminum but I dug her up on your guys advice. So thank you to the forum! Would of skipped it usually.

Now to the issue. The ring is very bent up. It is salvageable and able to be straighten. Just wondering what percent of the rings/jewelry you guys find are bent. I dug down around 5 inches so this ring is probably fairly old.
 
I've found one gold ring that was bent and it was relatively easy to bend back into shape. I've also found a silver pandora earring which was clipped by the mower, and a flattened silver toe ring (probably flattened by a mower)
 
All but one of my junk and silver rings are bent, my one gold ring is perfect but it's very stout to begin with, as is the one silver ring that's not bent. If they're heavy enough to settle and avoid mower blades and getting stomped on I think they fare better.
 
I have found only one sterling ring that was damaged. Obviously hit by a lawn mower and cut in half. Searched a couple of times but never found the rest. I do however find quite a few coins that have been hit by a lawn mower. I straighten them as much as possible and spend them.
 
Almost all of my thin rings have been bent , some a little and some a lot. The thicker rings hold up better and are rarely bent.


Congratulations on your first gold ring. Its a great find.
 
10k gold is roughly 40% gold, the rest usually copper or another metal hardener, so therefore more difficult to straighten out. 18k or 24k softer, easier to bend back.
 
Most rings can be straightened by slipping them on a ring mandrel and tapping them with a rawhide mallet. If it is cracked or bent almost flat it could break. As a silversmith I have repaired a lot of the silver rings that I have found to where they look like new.
 
Like Silversmith mentioned..

Get a ring mandrel ...

I've found over 500 rings, the mandrel can fix most of them fairly easy.. Sad fact of the matter is, most rings, you won't need/want to fix..

Also learn, what annealing is, and why..

<°)))>{
 
Thanks for the info. Hopefully this thread helped out some other noobs. I actually ordered a mandrel right after posting here.

I found the ring at an abandoned school right off the walking path from the parking lot to the school in the first 15 minutes off the hunt. Stayed three more hours and didnt find anything but some clad. Should of left lol.

Also, was hunting another abandoned school yesterday and found a live bullet about 4 inches down. One of the "locals" was walking towards me and told him I found a bullet, he asked me "did you find the gun?" I said "no why is there one missing?" He answered "uhhh, uhhh no". I am willing to bet there is a gun there somewhere. It is in a bad neighborhood. I might go back tomorrow and hunt the main entrance but there is a lot of trash all over, so the new NEL sharp will come in handy.
 
ring mandrel is great. I've straightened quite a few bent rings I've found. Some of them take a LOT of work (like the ones hit by a lawn mower!)

The key is to NOT be in a hurry (no hard pounds), and take your time, and really have patience (see what I did there?)

:)

If you don't have a jewelers hammer, wrap a regular one in many layers of cloth before you start tapping.

The coolest part of gold and silver is that they're highly malleable. you can totally restore most bent rings with time. This one took me about 2 hours total. My mom now wears it regularly.

Skippy
 

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Skippy SH13 said:
ring mandrel is great. I've straightened quite a few bent rings I've found. Some of them take a LOT of work (like the ones hit by a lawn mower!)

The key is to NOT be in a hurry (no hard pounds), and take your time, and really have patience (see what I did there?)

:)

If you don't have a jewelers hammer, wrap a regular one in many layers of cloth before you start tapping.

The coolest part of gold and silver is that they're highly malleable. you can totally restore most bent rings with time. This one took me about 2 hours total. My mom now wears it regularly.

Skippy
Click to expand...
Do you have an 'after' pic?
 
amc rulz said:
Do you have an 'after' pic?
Click to expand...

LOL

The second one is super grainy, but it's the after pic. I simply zoomed in on the ring in a picture of a bunch of rings in a box (on my computer) and took a photo of the computer screen. LOL

Notice there's no giant BEND in the ring? It's actually the only pic I had, after searching, I'm surprised I never took a really nice after shot.

That particular ring was silver plated silver (They do that for a fabulous shine, but it's the devil when it gets hit by a lawnmower and peels).

I had to polish that sucker on a wheel for about 20 minutes to get all the silver plate off and polish up the silver nicely...
 
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