Thirty Minutes Up the Mountain, and Your Ring Never Leaves the Building

If you live in South Reno, you have almost certainly had this experience: you take a ring in somewhere, hand it across the counter, and it disappears. It goes into an envelope, it goes to a trade shop in another state, and three weeks later it comes back with a repair you never saw performed by a jeweler you will never meet. Nobody can tell you what was actually done, because nobody in that store did it.

Forever Rox works the other way around. Over 90% of our jewelry repairs are completed on site by John Roxburgh, our master jeweler, at a bench in our Incline Village showroom. Your ring stays in the building. If you want to know what happened to it, the person who did the work is standing right there.

For anyone in ArrowCreek, Galena, Montreux, St. James's Village, Damonte Ranch or anywhere along the Mt. Rose corridor, that bench is closer than most of downtown Reno. Thirty minutes up NV-431 and you are parked outside the door.

Jewelry Repair Services at Forever Rox

Everything below is handled in house unless we tell you otherwise before we start. There is no category of repair we take in and quietly route somewhere else.

Meet the Bench Your Ring Actually Sits At

John Roxburgh has more than twenty years of experience in jewelry repair and custom design, with GIA-trained expertise behind the loupe. He is not a counter estimate who sends work out. He is the person doing the work.

That matters more than it sounds. When one jeweler both evaluates and repairs a piece, nothing gets lost in translation — not the reason the prong wore down in the first place, not the hairline stress crack in a shank that a quick sizing would have made worse, not the fact that the safest thing to do with a fragile estate piece is often less than the customer expected. You get told what the piece needs, by the person who will do it.

It is also why our turnaround is measured in days rather than weeks. There is no shipping leg in either direction.

Ring Resizing, Done Properly

Resizing looks like a simple job and frequently is not. A plain band can be sized cleanly in either direction. A comfort-fit shank has to be rebuilt to keep the interior curve that makes it comfortable in the first place. A channel-set or pavé-set band changes the spacing of the stones when the shank is stretched or cut, which means the setting has to be reworked rather than merely reconnected. An eternity band, strictly speaking, cannot be sized at all in the ordinary sense — it has to be partially remade.

Any jeweler can make a ring a different size. The question is what condition the setting is in afterward. We size at our own bench, under magnification, with the stones checked before the ring goes back on your finger.

If your ring has changed fit seasonally rather than permanently — a common thing at 6,200 feet, and common again in the Reno summer — say so. Sometimes the right answer is sizing beads rather than a permanent resize, and we would rather tell you that than take the larger job.

Loose Stones, Worn Prongs and Chains That Have Given Up

Most of what arrives at our bench falls into one of three buckets, and all three are usually catchable early.

Loose stones. If you hold a ring to your ear and tap it and hear a faint tick, that stone is moving. It will not tighten itself. Tightening a stone is a small repair; sourcing a replacement for a matched diamond in an heirloom setting is not.

Worn prongs. Prongs thin out with wear — gloves, gym equipment, granite countertops, steering wheels. Re-tipping rebuilds the metal that holds your stone in place. This is the repair we most often perform on rings that came in for something else entirely, which is a good argument for the free inspection.

Broken chains and failed clasps. A chain almost never breaks where it looks like it broke; it fails at the weakest link, and the weakest link is usually near the clasp where the most movement happens. We repair the break and check the rest of the chain, because fixing one link on a chain that is worn through in four places is not a repair, it is a delay.

Engagement Rings and Wedding Bands

Bridal pieces come to the bench for two reasons, and they arrive about a decade apart.

The first is before the wedding. A ring that needs sizing, a band that needs matching to a ring that was bought separately, an heirloom stone going into a new setting — all of it on a deadline that does not move. If you have a date, tell us the date. We will tell you plainly whether the work fits inside it, and we would rather turn a job down than hand something back late or rushed.

The second is years later, when a ring worn every day for a decade starts showing it. The prongs on an engagement ring are the hardest-working metal most people own: they take every doorframe, every steering wheel, every set of dumbbells, every kitchen counter. Re-tipping a set of worn prongs and re-polishing a thinned shank is routine maintenance on a ring like that, not a repair born of neglect. Most people simply have never been told it is a thing that needs doing.

If a stone has already gone missing, bring the ring in anyway. We can usually tell you what happened from the wear pattern on the remaining prongs, which matters, because the same failure is often in progress on the other stones.

What to Bring

Nothing formal is required — walk in with the piece and we will take it from there. Two things do help if you have them. Bring any loose stones, even chips and fragments; a stone you already own is almost always better than one we have to match. And bring documentation for anything insured or previously appraised, since an existing appraisal tells us what a piece is supposed to contain before we start work on it.

If the piece is insured and the damage might be a claim, say so at the counter. What we document during the evaluation is more useful to your insurer before the repair than after it.

Estate and Inherited Pieces

Inherited jewelry is the work we take most carefully. A Victorian brooch, a grandmother's engagement ring, a mine-cut diamond in a setting that has not been touched in eighty years — these pieces have value that is not entirely financial, and they are frequently damaged by well-meaning over-restoration.

Our approach is conservation first. We stabilize what is fragile, repair what is broken, and leave the character of the piece alone. Occasionally the honest recommendation is to do very little, or to build a new setting and keep the original intact rather than modify it. If that is the right call for your piece, we will say so, even though it is the smaller invoice.

If you are also trying to establish what an inherited piece is worth, our appraisal and buying service can handle that in the same visit.

How It Works

What Repairs Cost

We do not publish a price list, and we would be suspicious of anyone who does. The cost of a prong repair depends on how many prongs, what metal, what is set in them, and how much of the original structure is left. A number quoted over the phone before anyone has looked at your ring is a guess, and guesses have a way of climbing once the piece is on the bench.

What we will commit to: the evaluation and the estimate are free, you get the number before any work starts, and the number you approve is the number you pay. If we open something up and find a complication, work stops and you get a phone call, not a surprise at pickup.

When a Repair Is Worth It — and When It Isn't

Not everything should be repaired. A hollow chain that has worn through in multiple places will keep failing no matter how many links are rebuilt. A thin plated piece will not hold a solder joint. Sometimes the repair costs more than the piece is worth, and the only person who benefits from doing it anyway is the jeweler.

We will tell you when that is the case. It costs us a job and earns something more useful, which is a customer who believes us the next time we say a repair is worth doing. That standard applies to the watch side of the bench as well.

The Drive from Reno

Mt. Rose Highway (NV-431) leaves South Reno and drops into Incline Village in about half an hour. From downtown it is closer to forty-five minutes. From ArrowCreek, Galena, Montreux, St. James's Village or Damonte Ranch, you are already at the base of the highway — for a good number of our Reno clients, we are a shorter drive than crossing town in traffic.

We are in the Village Center on Tahoe Boulevard with free parking directly outside. No garage, no meters, no circling.

In winter, check NV-431 conditions before you leave. Mount Rose Summit sits at 8,911 feet — the highest pass in the Sierra Nevada that stays open year round — so the road is well maintained and plowed, but chain controls do happen. If the pass is closed, call us. A repair can wait a day, and we would rather you came up when the road is clear.

Free Cleaning and Inspection, Every Visit

Bring any piece in and we will clean and inspect it at no charge, whether it came from our cases or from somewhere else entirely. Ultrasonic clean, steam finish, and a look at the prongs and clasps under magnification.

If you are already driving up for one repair, empty the jewelry box and bring the rest. Most of the loose stones we catch are found this way — on a piece the owner had no concerns about at all.

Frequently Asked Questions

Also at Our Bench

Repairs are one part of what happens in the workshop. If you are coming up from Reno, it is worth knowing about the rest: watch repair and movement service, including Rolex and Omega; custom jewelry design for pieces built from scratch or rebuilt from stones you already own; and appraisals and buying for insurance, estate and resale purposes.

Local to the lake rather than the valley? Our Incline Village and Lake Tahoe jewelry repair page covers the same services closer to home, and our repair warranty explains what stands behind the work.