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What is the best way to mount the diamond?
Ronnie Mervis: Alright, the diamond is always, not always, usually set in a head, which holds it in place and the head is mounted securely onto the top of the ring. We like to go with the classic setting which is a four prong setting. Four prongs hold the diamond perfectly, safely and allow the diamond to show as much of itself as it can without being contained in a so-called cage or a box.
Now, there are people who ask us occasionally, are six prongs safer than four or eight prongs safer than six? Well, I could give you some responses to that. When one gets in a plane and you fly around the world. These days they have two engines maybe three. If three engines aren't safe enough, you could have the airplane manufacture, why don't you put six on or eight on or ten engines on, in case one or two of them fail, and the answer is, it doesn't happen because, it's been engineered in such a way, that three engines are perfectly safe to keep a plane in the air and get you across the Atlantic or wherever you're going.
In the same, way we feel that four prongs do a great job. If you really aren t uncomfortable and you want six, have six. Whatever your heart desires, but it is not necessary and you don't need additional prongs to hold the diamond in place in order to get it safer, because whether you have four prongs, set at every 90 degrees, obstructing more substance in each prong or whether you get six prongs, set at every 60 degrees, it helps slightly lighter prongs, you're actually in the same situation.
Generally if it's a much bigger stone of four carat or five carat, you might be able to spread six prongs around it without crating the diamond out, but for your average one carat or two carat stones, I'd say go for four prong head, because you just don t want to see so much metal and so little diamond. By the way, prong settings are just one way of doing it, you can also have the diamond held in a tension mount when there are no prongs that all, which is tension of the metal on either side, holds it in place, and sometimes we put the diamonds in a little channel, in occasion we put in a basal which is a ring of gold around it.
So, there're lots of different ways and which one is best is just the matter of choice, just the matter of taste, it isn't the best, as long as they all do a good job of keeping the diamond in place and they all do, they are all equally good. But tradition normally suggests a head with a diamond held in place by the prongs, and if that's the case, we say go with a four prong simple mounting, because it will do a great job and holds the diamond there for a lifetime.
Expert: Ronnie Mervis
Ronnie Mervis is co-owner of Mervis Diamond Importers - the leading diamond dealer in the Washington area for the past 30 years. Voted the "Best Place to Buy a Diamond” in the Washingtonpost.com Readers' Choice BEST BETS contest and selected in 2006 for having the best wedding rings in W*USA9’s A-List Top 100 of Washington, DC’s Best Local Businesses, Mervis Diamond Importers is known for supplying their More »
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