One summer season, between college and university I worked with an independent jeweler making silver rings manually for sale in National Trust centres and small gift outlets. Now I believed each ring would take a long time to create, and you’d start and entirely finish one ring before you start another, how wrong I had been. The silver rings making process had been a lot more organised than that to make certain output was profitable as well as the stocks were kept high enough for unforeseen demand.
The first part of the procedure is turning the basic silver wire bought in big rolls of various weights into ring shapes. This can be done by using a special steel rod in the shape of quite a long taper. The raw silver wire is attached tightly at both ends and then employing a turning handle on the opposite end of the vice it is turned and wrapped tightly into a spiral until each turn of your spiral is as near to a ring shape as you can. The tapering is usually to ensure you end up with several rings of numerous sizes to cater for various finger sizes.
When the spiral of silver is cut down the center leaving several un-joined silver loops you next need to find out how to hold a jeweller’s solder safely, and how 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 for each ring. Moving cautiously along each ring, you heat the silver ring up employing a circular motion until its molten hot although not melting, once you see a silver flash the flux has melted and fused together with the silver. Once the two ends are fused together, utilizing tongs you drop the ring straight into boric acid to pickle and clean away the flux. Rinse them in water after.
The next step with the batch of silver jewellery is to enhance the shape of them using a soft hammer and mandrel, sand away any rough edges then polish them up in barrels full of ball bearings through the night.
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