If you’ve got a wedding ring set or wear multiple rings on the same finger, you may have looked into the process of soldering your rings together. As a side note, in America, the term is pronounced “sodder” but in England, it’s pronounced “solder”, with the “L” audibly prominent.
Before you take the action of soldering your wedding rings together, you’re going to want to weigh the pros and cons of doing so and possibly explore some alternatives. But first it’s important to understand the process of soldering and discuss some of the reasons why people consider doing it.
What Are Soldered Rings?
Soldered rings are multiple rings that have been fused together by a filler metal, also known as “solder”, hence the origin of the term, “soldering”. People will typically solder two rings together, but you can solder three or more.
To solder jewelry, the bench jeweler must use a hard solder to fuse the pieces together, which is a metal alloy commonly made of nickel and silver. A hard solder, (i.e. a strong filler metal), melts at a lower temperature than the parent metal (i.e. the rings being soldered together). A tiny piece of the hard solder will be heated to an extreme temperature using a torch and fused on the inside of the rings to bond them together. Because the solder melts at a different temperature than the base metal, the original rings will not be affected.
How Long Does It Take to Solder Rings Together?
Soldering your rings together doesn’t take very long. The actual process of soldering can take only minutes when done by a skilled professional. However, it's a good idea to check with your jeweler in advance of dropping off your rings for soldering to see how long it will take to get in their work queue. It may take several weeks for them to accommodate your soldering project even though it only takes a few minutes of work. If you’re getting married and want your rings soldered for your wedding day, factor this into your planning so the soldered rings are ready in time.
How Much Does It Cost to Solder Rings Together?
Soldering your rings together is a relatively inexpensive process. The hard solder a jeweler will use is more than likely made from an alloy of silver and nickel and isn’t very costly. What you are paying for when you solder rings together is the jeweler’s time and expertise so your final cost can vary. Be sure to do some research on the jeweler prior to having your rings soldered and ask for a quote ahead of time.
Pros of Soldering Your Wedding Rings Together
- Help stop your rings from rolling around: One of the pros to soldering your rings together is that this will help stop them from rolling around on your finger, which can be quite an annoyance and take the joy out of wearing your jewelry. A common reason a ring might spin around on your finger is because you might need a larger size ring to fit over your knuckles. This unfortunately means the ring may not fit snugly at the base of your finger and might roll around, especially if you’ve got a center stone. Soldering rings together can help stabilize them and prevent them from spinning.
- Increased comfort: Because your rings roll around less often when soldered, you’ll also notice that now they are less likely to rub against that delicate skin between your fingers or pinch the skin between the rings themselves, so they are a bit more comfortable to wear, too.
- Decreased wear and tear: When you wear your rings day in day out, they’re subjected to daily stress caused by you just simply living your life. When the two (or three) rings rub up against each other all the time, it creates friction between them and can contribute to wear and tear. Soldering them together reduces that issue but note that it doesn’t prevent other types of normal wear and tear.
- Improved aesthetics: If you are a stickler for details and always want the pave stones on your engagement ring and wedding band to line up exactly right, soldering your rings together is a terrific way to accomplish this.
- Easier to keep track of: It’s easier to keep track of one large stack of rings than it is to keep track of individual rings. For this reason, people might opt to solder their rings together, especially if they take them on and off frequently.
Cons of Soldering Your Rings Together
- Potential damage to your rings: Taking the rings apart after soldering could damage your original pieces. Anytime you make changes or alterations to your jewelry, you run the risk of something like this happening, no matter how careful the craftsperson completing the work may be because accidents happen.
- Materials mismatch: The jeweler will do their best to make sure that the soldering material matches the color of your original pieces but know there may be some variances in color. This is because the rings and the hard solder are made from different materials and it’s virtually impossible for them to be an exact match.
- More difficult to take off: If you’ve got large knuckles and are soldering your rings together to prevent them from rolling on your finger, you may be creating another problem for yourself in that taking off more than one ring at the same time can be more difficult than just taking off the one because wider bands fit tighter on your fingers. There’s more surface area on the ring stack, which means you have less wiggle room so be sure to factor this into your decision.
- Harder to resize: You can resize your rings after you solder them together, but you’ll have to take them apart first, which means you’ll have to undo the soldering. As mentioned in the above bullet point, you run the risk of possibly damaging your rings in the process. Additionally, stressing the metal repeatedly like this isn’t good for the structural integrity of the rings and could present additional problems down the line.
Alternatives to Soldering Your Rings Together
There are several alternatives to soldering your wedding rings together, but you need to determine what issue you’re trying to tackle first to make the decision right for you. If you’re soldering your rings together purely for aesthetic purposes, then go for it! But if it’s to address a sizing issue related to the rings spinning around on your finger, there are a few options to consider that don’t involve soldering you may want to explore first.
- Sizing Beads: Since many people consider soldering their rings to address their ring spinning on their finger, sizing beads are a popular choice for people who might not want to solder their rings together as they provide the same stabilization of the ring that soldering does. Sizing beads are tiny little beads reminiscent of speed bumps that are soldered to the inside of your ring. If you’re looking at your ring like you would the face of a clock, the center stone being twelve o’clock, then the sizing beads would be positioned at five and seven o’clock. Sizing beads are an option for people with larger knuckles to comfortably wear their rings and stop the nuisance of it rolling from side to side without having to resize the ring.
- Ring Guards: Ring guards are another option for people who need to address the issue of their rings rolling around on their finger but may not want to solder them. Ring guards perform the same function as sizing beads, but ring guards are something you can add yourself. Ring guards are inexpensive plastic strips that attach to the underside of your ring and can be purchased online from a variety of retailers. However, many people find the plastic ring guard juxtaposed next to their rings to be aesthetically unappealing. If you want to consider sizing beads, ring guards are a good way to test out how sizing beads might work on your rings before you commit to adding them.
- Nested Rings: Nested rings are called as such because the rings literally fit together like a puzzle piece. The two (or three) rings will sit stacked on each other on your finger with no gap. These types of rings are often seen in bridal sets where the engagement ring is sandwiched between the two wedding rings. Because the rings are interlocking, they mimic the stabilization effect soldering has on rings without soldering them together.
Now that you know what soldering entails and can assess the pros and cons for your unique situation, you can decide if you’d like to do this to your rings. And if not, you now have a few alternatives to consider as well. Jewelry should be worn as a personal expression of yourself and hopefully this explanation of what soldering is and how it works will allow you to pursue the course of action that is right for you.
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