One summer season, between school and university I worked for an independent jeweller making silver rings by hand for sale in National Trust centres and small gift stores. Now I was thinking every single ring would take ages to produce, and you’d start and fully finish one ring before you begin another, how wrong I’d been. The silver ring making process was a lot more organised than that to be certain output was profitable as well as the stocks were kept sufficient for unpredicted demand.
The first part of the process is turning the standard silver wire acquired in big rolls of numerous weights into ring shapes. This can be done by using a special steel rod shaped like quite a long taper. The raw silver wire is secured tightly at both ends and then employing 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 close to a ring shape as you possibly can. The tapering is to ensure you end up having several rings of several sizes to cater for various finger sizes.
After the spiral of silver is cut down the middle leaving numerous un-joined silver loops you next need to understand the way to hold a jeweller’s solder safely, and the way 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 rows of ten and add the flux on the join of each and every ring. Moving with care 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. Once the two ends are fused together, utilizing tongs you lower the ring directly into boric acid to pickle and cleanse away the flux. Rinse them in water after.
The next step with your group of silver jewellery is to try to reshape them using a soft hammer and mandrel, sand away any abrasive edges then polish them up in barrels full of ballbearings through the night.
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