One summer, between college and university I worked with an independent jeweller making silver rings by hand for sale in National Trust centres and small gift retailers. Now I figured every ring would take a long time to produce, and you’d begin and totally finish one ring before commencing another, how wrong I was. The silver rings making procedure was a lot more ordered than that to make sure output was profitable as well as the stocks were kept high enough for unforeseen demand.
The first part of the process is turning the basic silver wire ordered in big rolls of numerous weights into ring shapes. This is done using a specific steel rod the same shape as quite a long taper. The raw silver wire is secured tightly at both ends and then employing a turning handle at the opposite end of your vice it is turned and twisted tightly into a spiral until each turn of the spiral is as near to a ring shape as possible. The tapering is to ensure you end up having several rings of several sizes to take into consideration various finger sizes.
When the spiral of silver is cut down the middle leaving numerous un-joined silver circles you next need to understand the way to hold a jeweller’s solder safely, and the ways to utilize the silver flux. Wearing an apron to protect your clothes, you lay out the raw silver rings onto a heat proof board in rows of ten and add the flux to the join of each ring. Moving carefully along each ring, you heat the silver ring up employing a circular motion until its molten hot however, not melting, once you see a silver flash the flux has melted and fused together with the silver. After the two ends are fused together, using tongs you drop the ring straight into boric acid to pickle and clean away the flux. Rinse them in water after.
The next thing with your batch of silver jewellery will be to enhance the shape of them using a soft hammer and mandrel, sand away any abrasive edges then polish them up in barrels full of ballbearings overnight.