History of the Heart Shank

As the story goes . . it was in the late 1980's in our shoppe on Baseline Road, here on Grand Island. A customer came in with an antique filagree ring that had been sized at the bottom. The customer had used bleach to clean the ring which sadly is Very Bad for rings that have been soldered. The chlorine eats the zinc which is a signifcant part of the basic solder jewelers use. Zinc lowers the melting teperature alowing vaious Karat solders to bond with the parent metal. Either way, the shape of the ring was very interesting. As I held it up I had a strange sensation, what we call "raru", that I should take a second look. It almost felt like my Grandfather was tapping me on the shoulder, saying Reg, take another look. Well it looked like an upside down heart. It is/was not unusual for customers to have issues with rings turning on their fingers, a considerable number have knuckles that are larger. Well we knew then that fingers ARE NOT round and in fact the worst shape you can make a ring is round. I have five different shaped mandrels other than round and they can help but the heart shank can ajdust for as much as two ring sizes and the unique shape keeps the ring from rolling around. In fact I have minor issues with size and my wedding band is 9mm wide. In the morning when my hands are larger I couldn't put my size 10.5 ring on yet later in the day it was almost loose. If I make the ring a size 11 so it fits in the monrning there is a good chance I could loose the ring in the afternoon. Now compound the problem with the fact that in Western New York our cold winters and warm summers add approximately a half size in the summer. The idea that it looked like a heart is obviously where the name came from. Now 30+ years later we continue to convert conventional round rings into "rings with a heart" shank. It isn't unusual for customers to bring/send us rings to have them converted. If you live in a climate like Western New York or just have knuckles that are larger than your finger the "heart Shank" is something you might consider.

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