What a piece is checked for before it ships

Quality control is not a step at the end. It is a gate, and the only interesting question about a gate is what happens when something fails to get through it. This is what a piece passes on its way to you, what is looked at when it arrives at the gate, and where it goes if it does not pass.

The stages a piece moves through

Every production order walks the same path, and you can see which stage it is in at any moment without asking anybody.

• Casting — the model becomes metal.
• Setting — stones go in.
• Polishing — surfaces, edges and the gallery are brought to finish.
• Quality control — the gate.
• Shipped, then delivered once you confirm it arrived.

The order matters more than it looks. Setting before polishing means the polisher works around stones that are already in, which is harder and is why a piece that has been re-set often looks it. It also means a fault found at the gate cannot be fixed by pushing forward.

What is actually checked

Six checks, against the approved spec rather than against a general idea of good. The spec is the thing you signed off, so "it is a lovely ring" is not a pass if the ring is a half size out.

• Dimensions and weight — measured against the approved spec: ring size, stone seats, gram weight.
• Casting integrity — porosity, pits and shrinkage, inspected before any setting begins.
• Stone security — seat depth, tension, and a clean, even setting on every stone.
• Finish and polish — surface, edges and gallery graded to one standard.
• Metal and hallmark — purity verified, and the piece hallmarked for the metal stated.
• Final photo QA — photographed and signed off before it leaves the house.

What happens when it fails

It goes backwards. A piece that does not pass the gate returns to setting — not onward to shipping with a note, and not to a conversation about whether it is good enough. The path forward from quality control is either shipped or rework, and rework has exactly one destination.

That is a deliberately narrow design. A production system where "ship it anyway" is reachable will eventually reach it, usually on the week somebody is behind. Making the failure route go back through the same stages is what stops the gate becoming advisory.

If a piece fails outright, or reaches you and is not right, it is remade at our cost. That is the only sentence in this guide that is a promise rather than a description, and it is the one that decides whether the rest of it means anything.

Why it is the same gate for every house

Orders are routed to whichever house is proven on that kind of work — a volume floor for a run of plain bands, a master atelier for micro-pavé. Different houses have different strengths, and pretending otherwise is how a specialist piece ends up somewhere that has never made one.

What cannot differ is the standard at the end. A network where each house grades its own work is not a network, it is a list of suppliers, and the client is the one who discovers the difference. Every piece clears the same inspection, whoever made it.