One summer, between college and university I worked for an independent jeweller making silver rings by hand for sale in National Trust centres and tiny gift shops. Now I was thinking every single ring would take ages to create, and you’d start and completely finish one ring prior to starting another, how wrong I’d been. The silver ring making procedure was a lot more ordered than that to make sure output was profitable and the stocks were kept high enough for unexpected demand.
The first part of the process is turning the standard silver wire bought in big rolls of numerous weights into ring shapes. This is successfully done by using a special steel rod the same shape as a very long taper. The raw silver wire is secured tightly at both ends and then using a turning handle at the other end of your vice it is turned and wrapped tightly into a spiral until each turn of your spiral is as near to a ring form as it can be. The tapering is to make sure you end up with several rings of different sizes to take into consideration various finger sizes.
Once the spiral of silver is cut down the middle leaving numerous un-joined silver circles you next need to learn the way to hold a jeweller’s solder safely, and the way to utilize the silver flux. Wearing an apron to safeguard your clothes, you lay out the raw silver rings onto a heat proof board in lines of ten and add the flux to the join of every ring. Moving carefully along each ring, you heat the silver ring up utilizing a circular motion until its molten hot however, not melting, once you see a silver flash the flux has melted and bonded with the silver. As soon as the two ends are fused together, using tongs you drop the ring into boric acid to pickle and cleanse away the flux. Rinse them in water afterwards.
The next phase with your batch of silver jewellery is to enhance the shape of them employing a soft hammer and mandrel, sand away any abrasive edges then polish them up in barrels filled with ball bearings through the night.
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