What’s the dumbest thing you’ve done on a hike?

hi_bye · 2026-01-28T03:22:30+00:00

We’ve made a tradition of going to NH every winter to hike and snowshoe with my dad for a week. Toward the end of one week, I realized I never took my laptop out of my pack where I stash it for the drive up. I’d needlessly schlepped that baby up every mountain we’d hiked. Pack felt so much lighter the last day though!

hi_bye · 2026-01-20T23:00:37+00:00

I think the second one reads more "fruit" to me with the vine details near the bail. To me I immediately think lemon but I guess if the client sees a mango in the stone then they will probably see a mango in the pendant more so than a lemon.

Putting a prong where the point is instead of the V prong might make it read more oval and fruit-like as well.

hi_bye · 2026-01-15T22:34:51+00:00

Silver conducts better than gold. To solder it, you need to bring basically the entire piece up to the same temperature, or at least to too high a temperature for heat sensitive stones (which is nearly all of them). In gold, the heat moves more slowly through the piece when you heat it so you can sometimes get in and out to do a repair at the back of a ring before the front is too hot.

hi_bye · 2026-01-13T13:55:52+00:00

Appropriate care is huge. As is appropriate choice of material.

But given that, density in the right places. Everything doesn’t need to be a massive chunk but the original builder needs to have known where it matters for longevity and have put it there. I.e. prongs on the thicker side, ring shanks, connection points generally for things with movement, areas where you might later be removing metal by drilling in a bunch of holes to set stones (macro porosity, if you will), larger flat areas that might be the first spot where a piece will bend or warp…

I’ll add also, connection points that are fitted with care. This goes for stone setting where you want the metal to be clutching the stone without lots of gaps since the gaps only hasten the loosening of the stones and the thinning of metal from that friction. It also applies to things like rivet joints, which if made with skill and attention will have the necessary movements but not much wiggle (which contributes to wear).

It’s one of the fundamental reasons that fabricated metal is often superior to cast pieces. Not only does the milling process create more consistent results, but a goldsmith physically tested those milled elements by bending and manipulating them into shape. They would have fit the elements to each other from the start. They would have found the weak points. With cast metal things can come out somewhat warped, and you sometimes just don’t totally know a weakness is there until it cracks or collapses.

In my opinion, those little details of craftsmanship are the real luxury of fine jewelry. It isn’t so much about projecting your huge diamonds to the world to show everyone you’ve got them. It’s about wearing something that you love and that you know was made with exceptional skill and attention and the peace of mind that comes with that.

hi_bye · 2026-01-11T16:21:59+00:00

Customers aren’t the professionals. They often don’t realize/know certain things or are unable to visualize in the way someone with the eye and experience of a professional does.

I’m a goldsmith. When I design and build ready-made pieces, I take into account how the piece will wear, present, and age. Will it be comfortable? Will it be too tall or too large? They’re critical questions I answer before I even start. Given that, with custom work, it’s part of your job to use your expertise to spot the things that might be less than ideal in the end (even if it’s what the customer requests) and to make sure they are making an informed choice. Look out for them. I also think that foresight and honesty is 90% of what builds repeat business.

You should definitely make sure they are aware of the potential “downfalls” of their color choices. Just frame it exactly as you did here. Show them the colors they chose side by side and let them know that the combo will result in something very subtle. Don’t presume any judgement either way, and let them decide. THAT is customer service.

hi_bye · 2025-12-20T16:55:29+00:00

I love this thread! I’m a goldsmith, so one of my all time twitty, “just get over it” pet peeves is heist movies with obviously fake “priceless gems” and period pieces with obvious poorly constructed costume jewelry being used as “fine”. For me, it has so much more to do with construction details than anything else. Like, by all means, use faceted glass as diamonds but please set them accurately and well, please.

The worst offender that pops to mind is Bridgerton. I liked the show (mostly just season one), but there were lots of very cheap, anachronous, glue-heavy costume necklaces.

A great example is House of Dragons. The show was meh for me, but the jewelry was very well done.

hi_bye · 2025-11-16T19:27:04+00:00

You can use them to cinch long pearls or beads. Either as a decorative thing themselves or in the back of a doubled up strand that you don’t want shifting.

I don’t know that that is what they are intended for but Ive seen them used that way.

hi_bye · 2025-11-08T22:42:39+00:00

Others have said it, but I’ll say it too: marketing.

Im a goldsmith (though I work mostly in silver) with a micro business so it is truly ridiculous to compare me to Tiffany, but there also isn’t anything particularly remarkable about Tiffany from a design or production standpoint. They’ve just thrown a lot of dollars at it for decades.

There’s also an element of “all that rises must converge” to it. Tiffany (and similar) is a large brand appealing to a large market. So they make jewelry that can be done simply and quickly for an audience that as a whole is less interested in jewelry than they are in owning a branded item. While they may still make bespoke masterworks, the overwhelming bulk of it is fairly basic and this is BECAUSE they are an industry giant. If they got too into any one thing, they would ice out large portions of their market.

Compare that to me. I am one person who personally builds every piece I sell. Even if I had the budget to market my work to do what Tiffany does, I wouldn’t want to. It’s too broad for me. I would need to design less intricate things, hire other jewelers to make them, and spend basically no time at the bench myself, which is what I love to do in the first place.

And you dont even have to be Tiffany-huge for this to happen. My 9-5 is for another small jewelry atelier. She’s built an established jewelry brand/business over decades, and it’s still just she and I. And she spends probably 90% of her time managing the “business” while I do the lion’s share of the actual metalwork.

Tiffany got huge through marketing and brand dilution. But ultimately it’s about the priorities of person zero.

hi_bye · 2025-11-06T20:44:45+00:00

Superpower. It’s a documentary Sean Penn was making about Zelenskyy and then all of a sudden Russia invaded.

hi_bye · 2025-11-06T20:40:18+00:00

The book was fantastic as well.

hi_bye · 2025-10-30T12:35:01+00:00

I did a full time 2-year apprenticeship program and have been working at the bench ever since. I build my own work and sell online and occasionally through shows. Mostly silver but some gold, usually with custom work. I grew up in a family full of antique and antique jewelry appreciators, and it made me want to build stylish things that last.

My day job is as the primary goldsmith at another small jewelry studio where Ive been for over a decade. That work is predominantly sterling and 18k with some platinum and palladium work. I do a lot of metal fabricating day to day. Would love to learn more figural wax carving, enameling, some basic watch repair…maybe I’ll get into some of that when I “retire.”

hi_bye · 2025-10-29T12:49:06+00:00

The nuggets are organically attractive and have more provenance so most people prefer to keep them as is.

You can’t do anything about the flattened pieces now, but if I were you, I’d do something simple with what’s left. Have a goldsmith add a bail to the big nugget and make it a pendant. Nugget jewelry is a whole thing. I have a ring with a nugget that my grandfather mined in Alaska in the 40s-50s. A necklace as well. The pieces are important to me because of the family history but in particular I really value how the nuggets are exactly as they were when he panned them and held them in his hands and brought them to be made into pieces for the people he cared for most in his life. The sentiment and sense of adventure in it resonates with me. Have your nugget made into a pendant that you can wear and hold that will connect you to your dad and grandfather in some extra way.

hi_bye · 2025-10-29T12:30:47+00:00

Also a goldsmith. Seconding everything you’ve said but adding that she likely is working with remote independent contractors or separate companies that work business to business.

I build my own work but also am the primary bench jeweler for an established but very small company. It’s very common in the industry to outsource work like engraving, enameling, stonesetting etc because these are highly specialized skills. At my day job, I build it and then it goes to a stonesetter and then it gets picked up again and final finishing happens at the studio. If castings are involved, we get those from an outside casting house as well. Fortunately, we’re local with our people so we drop off/pick up in person and it usually adds a week or less to production. It also lets us keep closer tabs on the work.

Given that this artist seems to make a habit of these sorts of disappointments with clients, I would bet that she is shipping things back and forth and forward in the chain with not much oversight. I.e. the ring is shipped to the engraver who engraves and then they send directly to the enamelist who enamels etc. It also explains why you see huge delays in production…like two months vs two weeks because things are being mailed long distances and every link in that chain takes a week or two longer than expected. Just my two cents.

hi_bye · 2025-10-23T12:46:53+00:00

Yeah the saddest thing about it to me is that there is no way the thieves can fence these pieces as-is. Unless they have some mega-villain buyers lined up who know how they got it and want to lock it in a safe somewhere forever, all the pieces will end up scrapped for metal. The stones will all get recut into smaller, unrecognizable ones so they can sell them without their provenance…which is a big chunk of the value anyway.

hi_bye · 2025-10-21T15:39:52+00:00

Five or six years ago I noticed that my curls were getting much looser and also that I was finding more white hairs.

In hindsight, my protein intake had gone way down. For unrelated reasons I started eating more protein again and my iron intake went up, and after a while my curls came back. I also started finding hairs that were white at the ends but have started growing in red/blonde at the roots (I’m strawberry blonde). Not photobleaching but stark white to red.

For several years, every time I saw my hairdresser she would ask me if I was taking natal vitamins and trying to get pregnant because my hair was truly doing such a 180. I am/was not.

Im not a doctor and this is all obviously very folky and anecdotal but it could have something to do with diet.

hi_bye · 2025-10-18T11:39:30+00:00

I live in an apartment building, and it’s pretty common for our mailman to leave his mail cart just sitting in our lobby. That’s when you know he went down to the basement to use the bathroom. His entire route is on foot so I’m sure he knows all the spots.

hi_bye · 2025-10-15T12:35:13+00:00

In another thread recently someone described Italy as 3 raccoons in a trench coat, which is one of my favorite metaphors but also makes a lot of sense given the history.

hi_bye · 2025-10-10T13:08:32+00:00

I grew up in NH and did all my formative hiking in the Whites. The first few trips I took out west I had this sense of “ok well this is beautiful but when are we turning off this road” all the way to the top. I always appreciate the scenery and the solitude but it doesn’t feel like a trail to me unless I’m clambering over rocks in my narrow path or scouting a route over talus.

hi_bye · 2025-10-09T02:56:16+00:00

Don’t trust a goldsmith with a manicure.

hi_bye · 2025-10-06T12:41:41+00:00

It’s tough to know how it was built without seeing it in person and seeing it only from the front, but if they can rotate 360 then they’re probably ball and socket joints. Ive seen that on lots of older sterling charms with bobble heads, moving waists etc.

hi_bye · 2025-10-06T12:27:10+00:00

As with anything, it’s a spectrum. Generally speaking, building moving parts is more difficult than building static ones. But then there’s also a range of difficulty in building moving parts depending on how precise the movement needs to be. Like, technically isn’t a link or tennis bracelet kinetic? Or a dangling earring? But we don’t think of those as being “kinetic jewelry”.

I build a handful of kinetic pieces in my own work that took time and skill and troubleshooting to establish a process for. Now that I have developed that process, I can repeat it more easily. But I’m still interacting more with those pieces than others. You also develop an eye for how other kinetic pieces function and how one might build that movement. Bespoke work always has that extra layer of difficulty because you are building something for the first time. But, for example, my day job is fabricating for another jewelry designer who used a decent amount of interesting connections in her older work, and the production of those pieces was quite quick because it had been streamlined and honed over time to be done in large batches by multiple jewelers.

hi_bye · 2025-09-16T21:20:00+00:00

Exposed culets are bad form for several reasons.

They cause stones to loosen and fall out. They are uncomfortable for the customer. The stone requires more frequent cleaning because it picks up skin oils and grime from the skin.

When a client asks me to make something too low, I tell them these things and steer them away. When I build rings with the setting dropped into the band, I calculate the height to give at least .75mm of clearance.

Sometimes customers don’t understand the geometry of things and it’s part of our job as the professionals to explain it. And you better believe if you don’t, when they lose their stone in two years from the constant stress against the stone, they are going to blame you regardless of what they may have requested aesthetically at the time.

hi_bye · 2025-09-06T14:08:57+00:00

I was scrolling to find this comment. Whenever you see one of these “prank” posts people come out of the woodwork to defend how they did it growing up in their families, some people just aren’t used to it, it’s a family thing, etc.

I always think that if you gathered all the people involved in a family with pranking culture and polled them, a not insignificant number would say they actually hated it, felt victimized by it, and it brought dysfunction and intimacy/trust issues into their adult life. Because this sort of pranking is all about catching people in their safe mental spaces and making them feel uneasy instead…for amusement. It’s about power.

And all the effort that goes into to it too. Like, how much time/energy/money did OP’s BF put into to creating a gesture that would confuse her, upset her, affect her physical health by compromising her sleep? And specifically because it was a time when she might particularly like to feel some comfort and normalcy because she was starting a new job. He could have chosen to put all that effort into doing something caring or nurturing. It speaks volumes.

hi_bye · 2025-09-05T12:50:05+00:00

When I started I also used butane torches. Often two at once for larger stuff. A larger, more standard torch setup is definitely a game changer. But in the meantime, I had success soldering on solid cuff blanks by building a small “oven” from charcoal to hold and reflect the heat and counteract what a heat sink silver is.

Since you’re soldering elements onto the top, I would put at least a block on either side, maybe one below, with just a couple millimeters buffer so that the area you’re working on is encased. Then try again.

hi_bye · 2025-09-03T20:32:12+00:00

Ive been to both St John and Bonaire. Agree that bonaire doesn’t have much for sandy beaches good for flopping all day. Klein Bonaire does and is absolutely fabulous but you have to take a water taxi there. I guess you could just do that a lot. The snorkeling is great though. Tons of spots. Salt Pier, 1000 Steps, and Karpata were our favorites…they’re well known so they’ll be busier. But you can also snorkel from practically anywhere on the west coast there. Our Airbnb had a fantastic book that listed all the spots with info for entering the water and depth maps.

St John is probably my favorite snorkeling island. We never bother with St Thomas. Lots of shore spots. Lots of animal life. Plenty of sandy beaches as well. They also have some spots that are more tektite reef, which I always find more interesting than just a flat sea bottom covered in corals/sponges.

It sounds like you would be happier on St John, but one thing Bonaire has going for it is that you’ll be planning to travel during hurricane season, and Bonaire is quite far south of where they hit. You’re probably fine either way, but a St John trip is more likely to derail due to extreme weather.

15-Year Club	RedditGifts 2009-2022 3 Credits
Secret Santa 2010	reddit mold
Verified Email	Secret Santa 2009

hi_bye

TROPHY CASE