On Mon, 20 Sep 2010 22:40:36 -0700, in rec.crafts.jewelry Ted Frater
wrote:

It depends on the setting of the diamonds, the area difficult to clean
is under the stone, so a tooth brush and tooth paste is a good way to go.
Rinse well of course.

The trouble with that, Ted, is that toothpaste is abrasive. Only slightly, and
not even all brands. But of those that are, they will damage any polish on the
metal, such as in reflective areas behind the diamond. Not an issue of course
on exposed worn metal, but there's no need to scratch up the parts that might
still be bright, with toothpaste. Just use the brush by itself (an old one,
never to be used on teeth again...) to remove anything loosened by not removed
by the boiling. A bit of detergent and/or ammonia added to the boil also helps.

Then theres the baby feeding bottle sterilising tablets. there sodium
hypochlorite and one tablet in a glass of water overnite will sterilise
the ring

yes, but this is a really poor idea. sodium hypochlorite is, essentially,
bleach. And bleach attacks gold alloys (kind of messes up silver too, but only
on the surface). Please don't clean gold, especially white gold, with anything
even remotely resembling (chemically) bleach. It can damage the metal,
sometimes leading to stress cracking that can cause prongs to break, losing the
stones. The boiling water will be quite sufficient to sterilize the ring.
There are only a very few infective agents that aren't killed by boiling (the
agent that causes mad cow disease, for example. It's a prion, not an actual
living organism or virus, and it's rather harder to kill being merely a
particularly unfortunatly shaped protein that isn't actually alive...
Fortunately, it also isn't likely to be on her ring...)

Peter Rowe