This is one mistake I learned the hard way which ended in surgery of my thumb. I should convince you not to pursue this career like other jewelers best advice, that being said it takes a lot to do the things that we need to do in this business sometimes. My mistake was cleaning someone's jewelry with no gloves and I had an open wound cuticle where bacteria 🦠 got inside and infected my thumb.

This includes rings, pendants, chains, and anything else that seems light for it's size. So what about these? I'll tell you what, for one, they're the nastiest and hardest to get clean, two it can melt and ruin easy, and 3 it'll be hard to remake and replace not to mention flimsy cheap 7k gold stuff that I strive to stay away from but with the laser I welcome all that.

Please don't attempt to polish these on the high speed polisher without wrapping on wood cylinders. I have plenty of stories where people have gotten seriously hurt so I'm going ahead and announcing this precaution as well as others. Especially not any hollow ones like this one, no polish with wheel, maybe the hand bristle wheel with zam.