Channel set eternity bands make a great “stand-in” wedding band. I wear a stand-in eternity band instead of the one that matches my engagement for the simple reason that sometimes when I’m going out and I don’t want to wear the “big rock” I slip on my one and a half carat white gold eternity band on my left hand ring finger where my engagement ring would normally go.

During the winter I can sometimes get it on my right hand ring finger and I’ll do that and wear my tanzanite or sapphire ring on my left hand ring finger.

What else is great about a channel eternity band ?

• For one it’s smooth and if I’m putting on a sweater or gloves I don’t have to worry about it catching on anything.
• It has a little more metal in it, (18kt white gold) because channels generally will have more metal than prongs so it feels substantial on.
• Yes, it still turns like any other eternity band but I feel a little safer accidentally hitting my band clad finger against a wall or something because I don’t feel like I might have bent a prong.
• Although I don’t wear my channel band with my engagement ring, the channel band is a good choice for an after thought band when you can’t get something exactly matching your engagement ring because at least it looks clean and won’t sustain any damage rubbing against your engagement ring.
• being one of the most popular styles of diamond band it’s available in a vast range of heights, widths and carat weights so you can get a pretty close match up against your engagement ring .

A good place to get an eternity channel band is your local jeweler. Some of the benefits of going to your local jeweler are:

1. You’ll be able to see a selection of channel bands and try them on to see how well they match up against your engagement ring.
2. If they’re good people you’ll get some good after sales service if you need it.

Some of the drawbacks with going to your local jeweler are

1. For a product like a diamond eternity band you can expect to pay a healthy markup.
2. Expect to wait anywhere from 4 to 12 weeks for them to get your ring custom made
3. Don’t expect to have any return options. You’ll have to sign their receipt acknowledging that it’s a final sale which means you’re stuck with it if you don’t like it.
4. Don’t expect to have a resize option if your ring doesn’t fit when you finally get it. They’ll tell you that eternity bands cannot be sized which for the most part is true, however you are ultimately responsible for telling them what size feels best and they will write something like “customer requests size 6 1/4″ on the custom order and have you sign it and so absolve themselves of any responsibility for correctly measuring your finger size.

My personal favorite place to get an eternity wedding band online is at Eternity Wedding Bands?

You’ve been told to start your diamond shopping online before hitting the local jewelers and now you’re lost in a sea of paperwork. You have pages of GIA and EGL reports for all the diamonds you’ve seen on Bluenile strewn in front of you and you have no idea what’s the really important information here. I mean, who knows if that extra thick girdle really affects the brilliance on diamond A, it’s still a better deal than that other one which is slightly off of “ideal” in table percentage.

There’s no doubt that hundreds of diamonds; important diamonds ; are bought and sold for the most part on what a diamond certificate says. Does this mean they’re to be trusted ? What about the scandal that rocked GIA last year with the grader who was accepting money to assign good grades to some diamonds.

For the most part, the top Independent diamond grading labs have certain standards and may emphasize different aspects of diamond grading one over the other, but it all comes down to an opinion, albeit an expert opinion but an opinion nonetheless. That’s why you can get 2 different color grades on the same diamond from two different labs each with competent graders. Heck, you can even send the same stone back to the same lab 6 months later and get a slightly different report in terms of color and clarity and even a few measurements here and there.

So, I’m kicking off a series on Diamond Grading reports that will cover the ins and outs of different types of grading reports and the different labs that put out these grading reports.

First off let’s start with a list of the world’s major gemological laboratories whose products range from diamond grading documents to light performance reports

1. American Gem Society Laboratories- Reputation for credibility,consistency, and thoroghness
2. American Gemological laboratories- Primarily deals with colored stones
3. GCAL-Gem Certification and Assurance Lab- Provides more technical certs, recent to the Grading industry
4. EGL USA-European gemological laboratory- Has a mixed reputation for grading reports, not as highly regarded as GIA and AGS in terms of thoroughness, consistency, and rigor in diamond grading
5. Gemex Systems- The gemex report is a different animal in that it measures and grades the light performance of a diamond directly using a spectrophotometer instead of using parameters of cut in attempting to predict performance and beauty of a diamond
6. GIA Gemological Institute of America- Often considered the international benchmark for diamond grading and independent third party diamond evaluation

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