Jewellery Polishing and Cleaning
It is essential to take good care of your jewellery if you want it to look and stay at its best. We would also strongly recommend bringing your jewellery into us to have it checked at least once a year, to ensure everything is as it should be. For particularly ornate pieces, or pieces that experience significant wear, every three or so months is more advisable. Better safe than sorry definitely rings true in this instance. If a setting happens to be worn or a stone is loose, then a repair will be less expensive than replacing a lost stone or a lost item of jewellery.
Professional Jewellery Polishing
If your jewellery is showing signs of wear and is scratched, we can polish them out for you. This is done by using a machine that has a rotating polishing wheel. During the process of making your jewellery smoother, such as ring polishing, a microscopic layer of metal is removed from the piece until its surface becomes more even. We do not recommend you have your jewellery polished more than once or twice a year. Speak to one of our experts for more information.
Ultrasonic Cleaning
You can bring your jewellery into Pragnell to be cleaned in the ultrasonic machine; a booking is not essential.
Ultrasonic jewellery cleaning machines generate high-frequency sound waves through water or cleaning solution, creating heat and pressure. They clean jewellery effectively by dislodging dirt and debris from behind gems and hard-to-reach places. Not all jewellery is suitable for ultrasonic cleaning. Our experts will be able to advise you on the best way to clean your pieces.
Watch Our Ultrasonic Cleaning Video
Re-Plating White Gold Jewellery
White gold jewellery is plated with a rhodium coating; this creates a bright blue-white finish on your jewellery. If your jewellery has started to turn yellow in colour, this means that the rhodium plating has worn away. When this happens, you can get your jewellery re-plated with a rhodium coating, usually once a year or less.
At Pragnell, we offer rhodium plating. Your white gold jewellery is cleaned and polished, then dipped in a plating solution. An electronic charge is then passed through the solution, attracting the rhodium particles to the jewellery, coating it and giving it back its lustrous blue-white appearance.
Polishing and Coating Pricing
| SILVER | 9CT GOLD | 18CT GOLD | PLATINUM | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| POLISH - FROM | £30 | £30 | £30 | £30 |
| RHODIUM PLATING - FROM | £36 | £36 | £36 | £36 |
Looking After Your Jewellery at Home
There are a number of things you can do to care for your jewellery and protect it from wear and tear. Gold is a fairly soft metal and the higher the gold content, the softer the piece; for example, high carat gold is likely to be softer than low carat. As a result, it is suggested that you wear similar quality pieces together.
Sterling silver will polish up with a simple polishing cloth. For more tarnished pieces, silver 'foam' or dip can be used to good effect. If there is pitting in the surface of the silver itself, polishing by the workshop will be required to restore the surface finish. It is important that you do not keep diamond jewellery items stored together loose, as they are likely to scratch each other.
Tip: keep your Pragnell jewellery gift boxes to store your jewellery in; your jewellery will be less likely to get damaged when it is not being worn.
Pearl Restringing
If the string on a pearl or beaded necklace starts to become loose or fray, it is best to bring it to us for restringing. Remember to store pearls, or any beaded necklace, flat, in a silk pouch if at all possible. We would always recommend that there are knots tied between the pearls when they are restrung – if the string breaks, you will only lose one or two, as opposed to potentially the whole string.
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