One summer season, between college and university I worked for an independent jeweller making silver rings manually for sale in National Trust centres and small gift outlets. Now I thought every ring would take a long time to produce, and you’d begin and totally finish one ring before beginning another, how wrong I was. The silver rings making procedure was a great deal more organised than that to be certain output was profitable and the stocks were kept high enough for sudden demand.
The first part of the process is turning the standard silver wire ordered in large rolls of numerous weights into ring shapes. This is done employing a special steel rod shaped like quite a long taper. The raw silver wire is attached tightly at both ends and then by using a turning handle on the other end of the vice it is turned and twisted tightly into a spiral until each turn of your spiral is as close to a ring form as you possibly can. The tapering is usually to make sure you end up having several rings of various sizes to cater for various finger sizes.
After the spiral of silver is cut down the middle leaving a few un-joined silver circles you next need to understand the way to hold a jeweller’s solder safely, and ways to use the silver flux. Wearing an apron to protect your clothes, you lay out the raw silver rings onto a heat proof board in lines of ten and add the flux on the join of each ring. Moving cautiously along each ring, you heat the silver ring up using 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, making use of tongs you drop the ring straight into boric acid to pickle and clean away the flux. Rinse them in water afterwards.
The next phase with your group of silver jewellery is to reshape them utilizing a soft hammer and mandrel, sand away any abrasive edges then polish them up in barrels packed with ballbearings over night.
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