Dale Mack works on a piece of jewelry at his new downtown Baker City shop, Mack Jewelry Designs, on July 1, 2025. (Jayson Jacoby/Baker City Herald)

Dale Mack adjusts the jeweler’s magnifier until the strap fits snugly against his clean-shaven head, selects a tool that resembles the instrument a dentist uses to probe between molars, and sets to his task.

He moves with the precision that suggests many years of practice.

Which indeed is the case.

Mack, whose family started in the jewelry business in Baker City just after World War II, recently returned to the profession after an interval of nearly two decades.

He and his fiancee, Sheila Baker, opened Mack’s Jewelry Designs in downtown Baker City in early June.

The business is at 1917 Washington Ave., on the south side of the street between Main and First streets.

Mack’s uncle, Fabian Mack, opened the family’s first jewelry store in 1949 in Baker City.

Mack’s father, Dan Mack Sr., operated Dan’s Fine Jewelry on Main Street for 45 years before retiring in 2002. Dale, 49, a 1994 graduate of Baker High School, repaired jewelry for his dad for several years after studying the craft at a Texas school for a couple years.

After the elder Mack, Dale bought the fixtures from his father and opened his own jewelry business in Baker City. Dale ran the business for almost five years before selling to Don McClure. Dan Mack Sr. died on May 5, 2017.

Dale Mack joined the Army National Guard soon after. He deployed to Iraq in 2010-11, where he served as a combat medic and was injured when an improvised explosive device damaged the truck he was riding in.

Mack said that for the past three or four years he has been repairing jewelry from his Baker City home.

But he and Baker, who have been a couple for a decade, discussed opening a business. Early this year they started looking for rental space downtown.

The spot they settled on is just a block west of the building where Mack and Sons operated and where Mack worked, at the corner of Washington and Main.

The building now houses the Copper Belt Winery tasting room and the Cheese Fairy shop.

Mack said he intended to focus on designing and repairing jewelry, limiting retail sales to online options rather than having brightly lit showcases displaying rings, chains, pendants and other pieces.

But he soon learned that customers “want jewelry in a jewelry store,” Mack said.

“Go figure,” he said with a chuckle.

So he and Baker have ordered an array of wedding sets, rings, earrings and chains in gold, silver and platinum. They hoped to get the inventory by Miners Jubilee, but Mack said on Tuesday, July 1, that he expects the showcases will be filled by late July or early August.

Mack said that although he’s eager to start in-person retail sales, helping customers pick out pieces that could become family heirlooms, designing jewelry remains his favorite part of the business.

The artistic process has changed considerably since he started working for his dad more than a quarter century ago.

Instead of fashioning hunks of wax, Mack manipulates a mouse across a computer monitor.

Design software, he said with a smile, is more forgiving than wax.

“Just delete, delete,” he said.

But whether a piece starts as wax or pixels, the challenge is the same as always.

“You can see what you want in your mind, and you have to translate that,” Mack said. “It’s a slow process.”

But a rewarding one — even though, Mack concedes, the injuries from the explosion in Iraq left his neck less patient with the hours of tedious work craning over repair bench.

“I enjoy the bench time,” he said.

More information is available at macksjewelrydesigns.com or by calling 541-403-1454.