One summer season, between school and university I worked with an independent jeweler making silver rings by hand for sale in National Trust centres and tiny gift outlets. Now I was thinking just about every ring would take a long time to produce, and you’d begin and completely finish one ring before commencing another, how wrong I’d been. The silver rings making process was a great deal more ordered than that to make sure output was profitable and the stocks were kept high enough for unanticipated demand.
The first part of the process is turning the standard silver wire bought in big rolls of various weights into ring shapes. This can be done utilizing a special steel rod the same shape as a very long taper. The raw silver wire is attached tightly at both ends and then by using a turning handle on the other end of your vice it is turned and twisted tightly in to a spiral until each turn of your spiral is as close to a ring form as possible. The tapering is to make sure you end up having several rings of numerous dimensions to cater for a variety of finger sizes.
Once the spiral of silver is cut down the middle leaving a number of un-joined silver loops you next need to learn how to hold a jeweller’s solder safely, and the way to utilize the silver flux. Wearing an apron to shield 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 for each ring. Moving very carefully along each ring, you heat the silver ring up employing a circular motion until its molten hot but is 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 straight into boric acid to pickle and thoroughly clean away the flux. Rinse them in water after.
The next step with your batch of silver jewellery is to try to enhance the shape of them employing a soft hammer and mandrel, sand away any rough edges then shine them up in barrels full of ball bearings through the night.
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