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 tiny gift outlets. Now I figured each ring would take ages to produce, and you’d begin and fully finish one ring before beginning another, how wrong I’d been. The silver ring making procedure was a great deal more ordered than that to ensure output was profitable as well as the stocks were kept sufficient for sudden demand.
The first part of the process is turning the basic silver wire obtained in large rolls of various weights into ring shapes. This is successfully done by using a specific steel rod in the shape of quite a long taper. The raw silver wire is attached tightly at both ends and then by using a twisting handle at the other end of the vice it is turned and wrapped tightly in to a spiral until each turn of the spiral is as near to a ring form as you can. The tapering is usually to make sure you end up with several rings of different sizes to take into consideration a variety of finger sizes.
As soon as the spiral of silver is cut down the middle leaving several un-joined silver circles you next need to find out the way to hold a jeweller’s solder safely, and the way 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 lines of ten and add the flux on the join for each ring. Moving carefully along each ring, you heat the silver ring up utilizing a circular motion until its molten hot but not melting, once you see a silver flash the flux has melted and fused with the silver. After the two ends are fused together, utilizing tongs you lower the ring straight into boric acid to pickle and cleanse away the flux. Rinse them in water after.
The next step with the group of silver jewellery should be to enhance the shape of them by using a soft hammer and mandrel, sand away any abrasive edges then shine them up in barrels packed with ballbearings through the night.
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