The green rock is called a “Tsavorite Garnet” (you can also see it called a Tsavolite Garnet). It is a moderately rare type of garnet mined near the Tsavo National Park in Kenya (hence the name). Gemologically, it is in a family called glossular garnets which includes some other related pale greenish and yellowish stones. It is usually found as smaller crystals, thus, the smaller stones are inexpensive, while a stone greater than 3 carats is far more valuable than a diamond (I believe what you see on my ring is .75 ct).
Compared to an Emerald it is less fragile and thus more suitable for a ring setting (usually emeralds, when used in rings, are in a “protective” setting, set into the ring; the crystal structure of an emerald is long and flat, such that it is prone to shatter lengthwise). Compared to an emerald it is more transparent and more “sparkly” ie, refractive though truthfully it is not terribly sparkly. It is just that emerald tends to be cloudy. Compared to the affordable grade of emeralds, it will look more like an emerald than a low-quality emerald does. Compared to a manufactured emerald, it is more green and less blue.
Chrome Diopside, which looks quite similar, is not durable enough for rings.
A really interesting stone is called an Iolite. An iolite’s crystal structure is such that it appears colored from one direction, and clear from another. Thus it changes its appearance as it turns relative to the viewer. The color is bluish purple resembling a sapphire, or Tanzanite, with greater durability than the latter, and brighter color than the former at the affordable grades. It is said that the Vikings used the Iolite’s light-polarizing qualities as a navigational tool.
Spinel is also a pretty cool stone for the budget-conscious jewelry buyer, ranging from sapphire blue to ruby red, with pastel shades in that range also common. Its durability is comparable to a sapphire or ruby. Apparently this thing they thought was a Ruby in the crown jewels of England, is actually a Spinel.
Tsavorite garnet. It’s gorgeous. My favorite color is dark, shiny green, so it would be a natural fit. I’d mentally ruled out emerald because it’s more fragile. Tsavorite or a diamond stimulant it is.
Iolite is beautiful, but it doesn’t feel “engagement ring” to me. If I ever get into wearing my own jewelry, I’d think it would be perfect for earrings or another ring.
Spinel is very pretty as well. Blue/red doesn’t make me excited though, and to wear this all the time I’ll have to be excited about it.
Quick question from earlier - if you lost your ring tomorrow and had to do it all over, would you get your ring from Moissanite?
Yes, definitely, it was a very good experience. They provided all the proper gem certifications and suchlike; I liked the included warranty; their customer service was extremely “can-do” and they didn’t try to sell me anything I didn’t want. I kept tweaking and making changes and adjustments, and it was never a problem or like I was being “difficult.” I liked that I could IM with a customer service rep since I generally hate the phone.
It was hard to find a jeweler to work with the combination of stones & metal I wanted; as I recall they were 30% cheaper than the nearest quote (which I think involved white sapphires rather than moissanites, which tend to be a bit more expensive, but still).
Anyway you can get a mockup and an estimate without having to commit to any purchase.
Seems like their site is the way to go then. I don’t mind the phone but if I’m looking at something online it’s much more organic to use a live chat than the phone. Plus it’s more of a conversation than “I’m calling to ask you this one particular thing” only to hang up and realize 5 minutes later I actually have 3 more questions.
You’ve been an enormous help. Obviously once I narrow down to some finalists I’ll post pictures, and then the winner
One of the questions in the OP was easy modifiability. Can platinum groups metals be modified readily? I don’t know, but I have my doubts.
My wedding ring (46+ years old) is called white gold and has been modified (resized) four times as my weight went up and down. It is now back to the original size. I was astonished to read that white gold is an alloy of gold and nickel since I had always assumed mine was an alloy of old and silver. After looking it up on wiki, it seems that nickel is indeed the commonest metal used, but many others, including silver, have been used. Maybe it was different 46 years ago. And it is certainly not plated with anything and, while it could certainly use a polishing, it really does not look that different from when it was new. If I replaced it, I would want the same alloy, whatever it was.
Be aware that garnets are still only a 6.5-7.5 on the Moh’s Scale, particularly if you want to wear this every day and are active with your hands. There is a reason diamonds and corundums (sapphires and rubies) are more commonly used in engagement rings and that’s because they bear up to wear better (10 and 9 respectively).
If you like green, tourmaline might be another stone to consider - comes in a wide range of colours.
If you’re really interested in coloured stones, the coloured stone section of the Pricescope forum might be of interest. They can point you in the direction of cutters who will source rough and cut you a stone in the cut and size of your choice (and this is really really good cutting, one of the drawbacks of coloured stones is that they are often native cut for weight and colour, which means wonky to the eye unlike diamonds). I found the guy who cut the sapphire for my engagement ring there - Jeff White, along with a local benchsetter who set it for me.
Reminds me of a friend. Her engagement ring has a Moonstone in it (hardness = 6). “Won’t the stone get scratched?” I asked. “Sure it will,” she replied “… and I can replace it for $15.”
My mom’s engagement ring was an Amethyst (hardness = 7) and it didn’t start to look worn until she had been wearing it 10-15 years. At which point she… (dramatic pause) replaced it with a new one. A loose 2 ct oval cut amethyst costs about three dollars.
Chrome Tourmaline is an extremely attractive stone. It’s hardness is about the same as a Tsavorite though.
I’m under the vague impression tourmaline is less tough than garnet. (Hardness and toughness are not quite the same; hardness deals with how prone a stone is to scratching, and toughness to things like chipping, IIRC.)
I second the pricescope colored stones section. A lot of vendors post there as well. However, the only thing you need to be careful of is that they are a bit draconian about not allowing people to mention simulants or synthetics (cz, moissanite, etc.)
A diamond simulant is seen by some to be an out-and-out fake (I mean, it is a fake diamond, really, in that it isn’t made out of the same stuff as a diamond). A synthetic is a laboratory-made stone that is the same chemical composition as the natural kind – that is, a synthetic ruby is made of doped aluminum oxide, just like a natural ruby, and a synthetic diamond is carbon just like a natural one (as others have mentioned, though, synthetic diamonds are still not cheap).
If you like green stones and don’t mind manmade you may also consider a synthetic. Moissaniteco sells synthetic (they call it “cultured” emerald and tourmaline. Cheaper AND easy to replace if it gets lost!
Some cutters on Pricescope (Michael E, for example – I’ve also seen him do settings similar to Hello Again’s) will cut synthetics to your specifications as well as natural stones, although some (e.g., Jeff White, who was mentioned earlier) will only work with natural stones.
One more thing, somewhat off topic – I think Iolite is too soft for a ring (not that you were thinking about it anyway), though spinel is both pretty hard and pretty tough.
I think what she’s talking about is a tension mount ring, something like is shown on the top left of this picture.
I have a tension mount engagement ring, and I love it. It doesn’t snag on anything, and it’s beautiful without being ostentatious. I don’t think it’s an option to get this kind of ring and later change stones without remaking the entire ring, though. The band is made to hold a specific stone.
{warning: rant}
I think this is so stupid. I never wanted a diamond, because they aren’t that rare, they actually aren’t valuable at all, the price is controlled by an extremely evil cartel, there is a vile black market in them, and ingenious marketing* has made them the “only good choice” for an engagement ring (when actually there’s hardly anything good about them) and I hate being told what I want. I hate that men are told that if I say I don’t want a diamond, I am definitely lying, and if they listen to me, they are less of a man.
Oddly, the diamond industry is the only one obsessed with painting any competition as a “fake.” No one talks about how a blue gem is a “fake sapphire” or that a red gem is a “fake ruby.” They’re just different things you can buy. But the all-mighty Diamond, well, it’s the only game in town – all other clear sparklies are “fakes.”
Pricescope has tons of great information, but they are pretty much infected with this attitude.
A “fake” is something of no inherent worth - ie a piece of glass. Nothing that is a gemstone, whether manufactured or mined - is a fake anything.
[/rant]
I don’t see why you couldn’t for Pt and Pd. Ir is brittle and high-melting, but Ir rings are mostly just rare and expensive novelty items AFAIK. Rh is super expensive and usually only used to plate rings
I’ve never come across Ru jewelry, and I don’t recommend handling Os.
Ah! Now I have a frame of reference. In many ways they have that “sturdy” look I appreciate. The only problem is do I want to change the stone later or not? I tried my mother’s diamond ring on, and a friend’s as well, and it somehow blends into my skin. I have vitiligo (my skin tone is maybe one shade darker) on my hands, and while I hate drawing attention to them, I also don’t like how the diamond kind of blended in. So I think maybe I won’t be changing gems in the future; the ring won’t require modification in the future (aside from resizing). So I think the tension setting might be the better idea. And tsavorite, or one of the other dark-green gems.
No worries on the rant :p. Trust me, I laugh at jewelry ads. I was appalled that the average ring price is $5k. The SO laughed and said “Honey, unless I go into debt for you, I don’t really love you”. It’s not like you can walk outside and sell your ring for what you paid for it. It’s like buying a new car, but ten times worse. I know that whatever I finally choose will have much greater value to me than any of the absurdly expensive stuff I have sitting in a safety deposit box in the bank. My mother lost her first engagement ring - a simple jade one - and she still mourns the loss 30 years later.
There was a Lexus ad last year (or the year before?) over Christmas, and the guy walks the gal outside and the hood has a big red bow on it. I got so mad - how the hell does he know what kind of modifications she wants? What if she doesn’t want the GPS but wants premium floor mats and a built in cooler? But my parents - even my grandparents - in no way resemble traditional values and gender roles, so that’s where I’m coming from.
Hello Again, I’m so glad you made that rant so that I didn’t have to I actually think it’s really cool that we can make things like this in the lab. (I think Moissanite is actually neater than diamond because of its greater dispersion.) I HATE diamonds, I have a cz in my engagement ring (although if I had to do it again I would get a sapphire), and a collection of well-cut synthetics that I adore.
Sorry if my post made it look like I was endorsing calling things “out-and-out fakes” (I was quoting an earlier post) – I more meant it as a warning as to the sort of attitude the OP will find if she goes somewhere like Pricescope – although I love that board and have learned a lot from it, I’ve had warnings and deleted posts from even mentioning synthetics or sites that sell them.
I’ve heard tension mounts can have problems with stability and certainly re-setting. The earlier poster may have been talking about bezel settings. My engagement ring is a http://www.knoxjewelers.biz/categories/contemporary-engagement-rings/page-9/ (the Half-Bezel Surprise on that page) which I love – low-set, never catches on anything. Brian assured me I could change out the stone if I wanted to (though the stone does have to be exactly the same size; however this is easy with diamonds and synthetics/simulants), but I think it may depend heavily on the jeweler and bezel, so you definitely need to ask beforehand.
Hello Again, I tried doing the Moissanite “build your ring” thing, but it didn’t appear you could add any gem but plain Moissanite, yet I see other gems in the sale grouping. Am I doing it wrong?
Get a rep on IM & explain what you want. The online build-your-ring tool is just a semi-custom option and doesn’t offer the full range of choices (which is just about anything, including gems they don’t have listed as stock).
I am also in love with tons of things on Etsy, but if you’re picky, you may want to talk to a local jeweler whose work you like and see if they will make something custom for you with other materials, stones, etc. We just walked into a local place shortly after we got engaged (on a whim - it was a few blocks from the apartment we were living in at the time); I’d walked by it a million times, but never set foot in it because I assumed they would be too expensive.
I was reluctant to order something online that I plan to wear every day for the next few decades; I am the granddaughter of antique dealers, and therefore very picky about my jewelry (“good” jewelry, anyway; less so with, say, a $15 pair of silver earrings) and want to see what things look like in person. But the jeweler was quite willing to work with us on design, didn’t push us toward diamonds at all, and I ended up with a reasonably priced, simple, bezel-set sapphire ring that actually fit me properly (I have teeny fingers; it’s currently a size 4.75). I’m not a fan of prongs because they catch on things. Thus the custom design route.