Making a ring

A couple of weeks ago, I went with a friend to a jewelery making day  - courtesy of a Groupon offer! We turned up early - 9am is certainly early for me on a Sunday - and met our fellow jewelers, as well as our instructor for the day, who turned out to have worked with one of my neighbours who is a designer and silversmith.

Most of the morning was spent learning about how jewelery is made from scratch, and the difference between hand made and hand finished. We saw how moulds are made, and how the metal is introduced into them, and how things are finished afterwards. It was fascinating.  Then, we had to make our own silver ring, from a strip of silver, carefully cut to match out finger size. This was mine:

Then we had to bend it into a circle using some small pliers to start it off, and then hammering it over a spike of some kind. Forgotten the technical term! Mine didn't look too bad, but I did get some help. then the most exciting bit - I love playing with fire so a bit of silver soldering to seal them was great fun. At the end we had a lovely circular ring

All it needed now was hitting with a big hammer to flatten it off

Then we had to put the facets on and make the ring bigger to fit. This was a real specialist job and involved another hammer. It also involved Andrew starting it off for us, and then us all having a go. It certainly wasn't as easy as he made it look. Every facet had to be same size and even, and you had to hit each one in exactly the same place with the hammer every time. Here's me doing mine.

And here's Andrew correcting all of my mistakes to make it presentable!

After some serious finishing and polishing, I had a great ring at the end of it, and a great day. Would certainly recommend it. They do a lot of different courses, you can see them here.