Published 11 August 2026 by Rajesh Londe, 3rd generation jeweller | About the author
This table applies to gold and diamond jewellery anywhere, not just to one city. Turnaround figures are general workshop ranges and every bench quotes its own depending on workload and how many operations your piece needs. No jeweller can price a repair without seeing the piece, so treat the cost column as what the price is built from rather than as a number.
| Repair type | What it actually involves | Typical turnaround | What drives the cost | Does the gold weight change |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Chain or clasp repair | Soldering a broken link, or fitting a new clasp and jump ring | Same day to 2 days | Number of break points, clasp type, whether the chain is hollow | Yes, slightly up, solder is added |
| Ring sizing up | Shank is cut, matching gold is inserted, soldered, filed and finished | 2 to 4 days | How many sizes, width of the shank, the gold added | Yes, up, you pay for the added gold |
| Ring sizing down | A section of shank is removed and the two ends are rejoined | 2 to 4 days | How many sizes, whether the design runs through the shank | Yes, down, ask for the removed gold back or credited |
| Stone tightening | Worn prongs or bezels are pushed back and burnished onto the stone | 1 to 3 days | Number of stones, setting style, how worn the metal is | Barely, this is metal movement not removal |
| Prong rebuilding or retipping | Fresh gold is added to prongs worn thin and reshaped over the stone | 2 to 5 days | Number of prongs, whether stones must be unset first | Yes, slightly up |
| Stone replacement | Sourcing a matching stone and setting it into the empty seat | 3 days to 2 weeks | Almost entirely the stone, matching an old cut takes time | Barely, the stone is the cost, not the metal |
| Rhodium plating on white gold | Clean, electroclean and electroplate a thin white rhodium layer | 1 to 3 days | Surface area, whether stones need protecting first | No meaningful change |
| Polishing and finishing | Abrasive wheels and compounds cut back the scratched surface layer | Same day to 2 days | Surface area, depth of scratching, texture to be preserved | Yes, down, a thin surface layer is removed |
| Pearl restringing | Old thread removed, pearls cleaned, restrung on fresh silk with knots | 2 to 5 days | Number of pearls, knotting, clasp replacement | Not applicable, only the clasp is metal |
| Mangalsutra restringing | Black beads and vati transferred to new thread or a new gold chain | 2 to 5 days | Bead count, whether the vati also needs repair | Depends, thread only means no change |
| Remaking a heavy piece into a lighter one | Old piece is melted and refined, new gold is worked into a new design | 10 days to 4 weeks | Refining loss and fresh making charges on the new piece | Yes, significantly, get the recovered weight in writing |
A broken chain is the most common repair in any jewellery shop and the majority of breaks are a one point fix, usually a snapped link or a clasp spring that has stopped catching. The bench opens the link, aligns it, solders it and refinishes that section, and the chain is as strong at that point as it was originally. Most chains come back within a day or two.
The exception saves people real money. If a chain has broken three or four times in different places over a year or two, the problem is not the links that broke, it is that the whole chain has thinned from years of friction until every link is near its limit. Repairing one link there simply relocates the next break. At that stage, weigh the chain and take its gold value against a new one. Hollow chains deserve extra caution because there is far less metal to work with and the walls dent and split rather than stretch.
Most plain gold rings can be moved about two sizes in either direction in a single job without changing how the ring looks. Sizing up means the shank is cut at the bottom, a matching piece of gold is inserted, soldered in, filed flush and refinished, and you pay for the gold that went in. Sizing down means a section is cut out and the two ends are rejoined, and the gold that came out belongs to you, so ask for it back or ask for it to be credited on the bill.
Three designs resist resizing. An eternity ring set with stones all the way around has no plain section to cut, so it can only be resized by remaking the shank or by replacing stones. A ring with engraving, milgrain or pattern running continuously around the band shows a visible interruption wherever the join sits. A tension set ring uses the springiness of the metal itself to hold the stone, so cutting the shank changes the grip. If your ring is one of those three, ask about a remake instead. Sizing beads fitted inside the shank are worth asking about when a ring only needs to sit a fraction tighter, particularly for a knuckle larger than the finger below it.
If you hold a ring next to your ear, tap it gently against your fingernail and hear a faint tick, a stone is loose and the piece should not be worn again until it is tightened. That tick is the most useful home check in jewellery and it costs nothing. Prongs and bezels are thin metal doing a mechanical job every day, and they wear down, bend outward and eventually release the stone. A stone tightening is a small job, usually one to three days, and it is dramatically cheaper than replacing a lost diamond.
When prongs have worn thin rather than merely opened, the bench adds fresh gold to the tips and reshapes them, which is called retipping. If a stone has already gone, the cost of replacement is almost entirely the stone rather than the labour, and matching an older stone takes time because colour, clarity and cut all have to sit alongside the ones still in the piece. Bring any paperwork you have, because on a certified centre stone the grading report tells the bench exactly what it is matching. Our guide on reading an IGI or GIA certificate explains which fields matter. We work with natural diamonds only.
White gold is not naturally white. It is yellow gold alloyed with white metals to lighten it, and it still carries a faint warm tone underneath, so almost all white gold jewellery leaves the workshop with a microscopically thin layer of rhodium electroplated over it to give that bright cool white. Rhodium is extremely hard but the layer is measured in fractions of a micron, and it wears with use rather than failing suddenly.
The result is a piece that goes warm in exactly the places it gets handled most, which on a ring is the underside of the shank and the shoulders. Earrings and pendants rub against far less and their layer can last several years. As a general rule a white gold ring worn every day needs replating somewhere in the one to two year range, and there is no fixed schedule because it depends entirely on the wearer. Replating is a surface process, it does not remove gold, and it is usually combined with a light polish first so the fresh layer goes onto a clean surface. Anyone telling you white gold never needs replating is describing a metal that does not exist.
Polishing removes metal. That is the whole mechanism, and it is the most misunderstood fact in jewellery care. A scratch is a groove cut into the surface, and the only way to remove a groove is to cut the surrounding surface down to the bottom of it. A polishing wheel loaded with compound is an abrasive tool doing exactly that, so every polish takes a thin layer of gold off your piece.
For a single light polish on a normal ring the loss is small enough that it usually will not register on a scale reading two decimal places. The problem is cumulative. A ring polished every few months for two decades has been cut back dozens of times, and the shank ends up visibly thinner than the day it was made. Buffing with a soft cloth at home is a different thing entirely, it burnishes and cleans without meaningful cutting, and it is what most dull looking gold actually needs. Clean often, buff gently, polish rarely, and never let anyone put a polishing wheel on a piece with a deliberately matte, textured, antique or hand engraved finish, because the wheel takes that finish straight off. Traditional Vidarbha work is exactly this category, and our note on Nagpuri hollow karigari explains why those pieces need a lighter hand.
A regularly worn pearl strand needs restringing roughly every one to two years. Silk thread stretches, soaks up skin oils and perfume, and weakens invisibly from the inside, so the failure arrives without warning. The check is to hold the strand up by the clasp and look at the gaps. If you can see thread between the pearls where you could not before, the thread has stretched and its time is up.
Insist on a knot between every pearl and understand why. The knots keep adjacent pearls from grinding against each other, since nacre is soft and pearls scratch each other far more readily than people expect. More importantly, when a knotted strand does break you lose one pearl, not the entire strand across a marble floor. Restringing is also the right moment to have the clasp checked, because a tired clasp on a fresh string is a strand waiting to be lost.
A mangalsutra is worn every single day for decades, which makes it the most heavily used piece most families own and the one that comes in for repair most often. The two failures are separate. Thread frays exactly where it passes through the vati and at the clasp. The vati itself, the gold pendant, loosens at its bail, wears thin where it rubs against clothing, or loses stones from its setting.
Restringing a bead mangalsutra onto fresh thread involves no change to your gold at all, which is worth confirming on the receipt. Moving the beads onto a gold chain instead is new gold and gets quoted as a new piece. A vati repair is normal gold work, soldering the bail, building up a thin section or resetting stones. Bring any spare beads you have kept, because matching old black beads to new stock is not always possible. Our mangalsutra and vati weight guide covers what the gold in a vati typically weighs.
The commonest version of this request is a heavy traditional set inherited two generations ago that has not left the locker in fifteen years, and gold sitting in a locker is doing nothing for anybody. Remaking melts and refines the old piece, recovers the pure gold, and works it into a lighter modern design, with any shortfall bought and any excess adjusted against the bill or taken in value.
Three things to understand first. There is a real loss in the process, because melting and refining consumes a little metal and old pieces frequently contain solder of a lower purity than the body, so the recovered pure weight is lower than the weight you walked in with. Fresh making charges apply, because it is genuinely new work. And an antique piece with real craft value, old karigari or hand raised work nobody makes any more, is often worth more intact than remade, so ask before you melt anything old and unusual. Get the recovered pure gold weight, the making charge and any additional gold quoted as three separate lines. Our making charges guide for Nagpur and the live Nagpur gold rate are the two inputs you can check yourself before you walk in.
Every repair moves the weight of a piece a little, and the direction is predictable once you know which operation is being performed. Sizing up and prong retipping add gold, so the piece comes back heavier and you are paying for that metal. Sizing down removes gold, so the piece comes back lighter and the removed gold is yours. Soldering adds a small quantity of solder alloy. Polishing removes a thin surface layer. Rhodium plating changes nothing you could measure. Ultrasonic and steam cleaning change nothing at all.
None of this is a problem. It becomes a problem only when nobody wrote down what the piece weighed before it went to the bench, because then there is no way to tell an ordinary polishing loss from something that should not have happened. Ask for the weight at drop off, ask for it again at collection, and ask which operations the piece received. Any jeweller who will not weigh a piece in front of you has answered a different and more important question. If a piece turns out to be past repair its gold still holds full value, and our gold exchange policy for Nagpur and the old gold valuation guide set out how that value is worked out.
Get the estimate in writing before any work starts, and make sure it separates labour from gold, because lumping them together is how a repair bill becomes a surprise. The estimate should also say what happens if the workshop finds something once the piece is open, since a loose stone discovered during a resize is common and you want to know in advance whether that changes the price or triggers a phone call to you.
Ask these six before you let go of the piece. What does it weigh right now and will you write that on the receipt. How many stones are on it and are any already chipped or loose. Which operations exactly is it getting. Is the gold you remove returned to me. Will the finish match what it has now. When do I collect it. Two minutes of questions eliminate essentially every dispute that arises over a repair. Then photograph the piece on your own phone, front and back, in decent light, before you leave.
A plain gold band with a solid shank can usually be resized several times over its life, and most jewellers will move a ring roughly two sizes up or two sizes down in a single job without altering how it looks. Beyond that range the shank starts to change proportion, thinning if it is stretched and bunching if it is compressed. Rings that resist resizing are eternity bands set with stones all the way around, rings with pattern or engraving running through the shank, and tension set designs where the metal itself grips the stone. Those need a different approach or a remake.
Yes. Polishing is abrasive by definition. It works by taking off a very thin surface layer of metal along with the scratches sitting in it, so every polish removes a small amount of gold. One light polish on a normal piece is usually too small to see on a scale reading two decimal places. The effect is cumulative rather than dramatic, which is why a ring polished every few months for twenty years can end up with a shank noticeably thinner than the day it was made. Polish when the piece genuinely needs it, not by habit.
Rhodium plating is a microscopically thin white layer applied over white gold, and it wears rather than fails. A ring worn every day on a working hand generally needs replating somewhere around the one to two year mark, while earrings, pendants and pieces worn occasionally can go several years without it. Warm yellow patches on the underside of a shank or behind a setting are the first sign. Replating is a surface job and does not remove any meaningful amount of gold.
Almost always, by a small amount, and the direction depends on the job. Sizing a ring up adds metal, so the piece comes back heavier. Sizing down removes metal, and the gold taken out should be returned to you or credited against the bill. Soldering adds a small quantity of solder alloy. Polishing removes a thin surface layer. This is exactly why the weight should be recorded on the receipt before the piece is handed over and checked again on collection.
Most chain breaks are repairable. A snapped link, a clasp that no longer closes or a bent jump ring are routine soldering jobs and the chain comes back as strong as before at that point. The case where repair stops making sense is a chain that has broken repeatedly in different places, because that is not bad luck, it is a chain that has thinned along its whole length from years of friction. Fixing one link on a chain like that simply moves the next break a few links along.
Yes, and it is one of the most common requests a jeweller receives. Heavy traditional sets that never leave the locker can be melted and remade into lighter pieces that actually get worn, with the excess gold either adjusted against the new piece or taken back in value. There is a loss in the process because melting, refining and fresh making all consume a little metal, and new making charges apply to the new piece. Ask for the recovered pure gold weight and the making charge to be quoted as separate lines before you agree.
A pearl strand worn regularly should be restrung roughly every one to two years, and sooner if the thread has stretched enough that you can see gaps between the pearls when the strand hangs. Silk stretches, absorbs skin oils and perfume, and eventually gives way without warning. Insist on knotting between every pearl. The knots stop the pearls rubbing against each other and mean a break costs you one pearl instead of the whole strand rolling across the floor.
Walk into any of the four Londe Jewellers Gold & Diamonds showrooms in Nagpur, at Sitabuldi, Gokulpeth, Manish Nagar and Nandanvan, all open 11 AM to 8:30 PM. The Sitabuldi showroom is at Modi Number 2, opposite Datta Mandir, Sitabuldi, Nagpur 440012, phone +91 90755 12053, close to Variety Square. Bring the piece, we weigh it in front of you, write the weight and the stone count on the receipt and give you a written estimate before any work begins. You do not need to have bought the piece from us.
Broken clasp, loose stone, a ring that stopped fitting, or a set that has not been worn in years. Four Nagpur showrooms at Sitabuldi, Gokulpeth, Manish Nagar and Nandanvan, all open 11 AM to 8:30 PM. Weighed in front of you, written estimate before any work starts, whether or not you bought it from us. Londe Jewellers Gold & Diamonds, Golden Bonds of Trust.
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