This morning I was confromted with an issue that is common in the jewlery industry.  I do the repair work for a number of stores; and, I was asked to size a ring to an 8.  The repair was sent back and the comment was that it was not an 8!  For whatever reason there is no board of standards to govern what a ring size is,  like when you buy a ruler, an Inch is always the same.   This is not so with ring mandrels (the stick that measures a ring's size). They all differ in size from manufacturer to manufacturer between 1/4 to a full size depending on the material of the mandrel and the manufacturer.  The plastic and aluminum ones are the most incorrect.  To maintain some consistencey I have purchased the solid steel ones from Stuller that go all the way to a size 16.  I also have made sure that the ring gauges that we size customer's fingers with matches our mandrels.  All of these steps I have taken have taken all the complaints out of my retail customers sizing experinence.