One summer, between foundation college and university I worked for an independent silver ring jeweller producing the crafts by hand to be sold in National Trust centres and small to medium-sized gift stores. I expected each silver ring would take millenia of labor, and each silver ring was custom manufactured to the end beginning another, how wrong I was. The silver ring making process was more structured than that to ensure that the ring racket remained profitable and in case of unexpected need there would be enough.
The process starts by transforming the silver wire that is received in bulk rolls of varying weights into circular shapes. This is done using a special steel rod shaped like a very long taper. The silver wire is fastened at both ends and a coil is turned several times until the wire is bent into as approximately as possible into a circular shape. Fingers vary in size so the rings must be made in a variety of sizes to accommodate such finger-girth-variances.
The next step is to cut each ring in 2 and knowing how to operate a solder like a champion. Wearing an apron to protect your clothes, you lay out the raw silver rings onto a heat proof asbestos board in rows of ten and add the flux to the join of each ring. Moving carefully along each ring, you heat the silver ring up using a circular motion until its molten hot but not melting, once you see a silver flash the flux has melted and bonded with the silver.
After the two ends are fused together using tongs you drop the ring into boric acid to pickle and clean away the flux. Use H2O to wash off any remaining debris.
The next step with your batch of silver rings is to reshape them using a soft hammer and mandrel, sand away any rough edges then polish them up in barrels full of ball bearings over night. I don't have to tell you twice that this process is painstaking yet truly fascinating. Each silver ring was only worth 2 or 3 pence in reality and sold for between 1.75 and 3.50 in the shops, but as a trainee silversmith you were only paid 10 pence a ring for all the effort. Obviously the faster you worked the more you earned but on average this gig paid only 20 pounds a day.
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