How jewelry is made — the stages of production of rings and other products on Silvers

Jew­el­ry has always been used as a sign of pow­er, pres­tige, wealth or class. They were dif­fi­cult to obtain and expen­sive. Today they are worn by both women and men. The cre­ation of jew­el­ry is car­ried out in series using machines, not nec­es­sar­i­ly from expen­sive dec­o­ra­tive mate­ri­als. The main dif­fer­ence between arti­fi­cial and noble prod­ucts lies in the mate­ri­als from which they are made and in the price, which is many times low­er.

What is jewelry made from?

Jew­el­ry is made from met­als such as:

• Gold is a soft and elas­tic met­al of a bright yel­low col­or that does not cor­rode when exposed to mois­ture. To make gold hard and strong enough, but at the same time have the desired col­or, sil­ver, cop­per, zinc, nick­el and pal­la­di­um are added to it. The most pop­u­lar is an alloy of gold with pal­la­di­um, nick­el, sil­ver, which is called “white gold”;

• pure sil­ver is not suit­able for jew­el­ry. It is too soft, so prod­ucts made from it will be short-lived. To increase the hard­ness of sil­ver, it is alloyed with oth­er met­als such as cop­per. An inter­est­ing option is to cov­er with a thin lay­er of rhodi­um, thanks to which it does not dark­en, becomes strong and durable;

• Plat­inum is a soft met­al, so it is easy to process, but not durable. A small addi­tion of oth­er met­als is enough to great­ly improve its strength. Plat­inum alloys with gold, pal­la­di­um, irid­i­um, sil­ver and cop­per are pop­u­lar. Pal­la­di­um makes it much brighter. The addi­tion of sil­ver and cop­per improves its mechan­i­cal prop­er­ties;

• brass and bronze are char­ac­ter­is­tic met­al alloys, extreme­ly fusible. They take on very inter­est­ing col­ors that make the jew­el­ry look old­er, more expen­sive and nobler.

What gemstones are jewelry made from?

Mak­ing jew­el­ry to order makes it unique.

Prod­ucts of this type serve for many years and can be passed down from gen­er­a­tion to gen­er­a­tion or remain an invest­ment for the future.

Imi­ta­tion jew­el­ry is most often made in large quan­ti­ties from base met­als. After coat­ing with anoth­er mate­r­i­al, they imi­tate the appear­ance of their expen­sive coun­ter­parts.

Equiv­a­lents of pre­cious mate­ri­als from which the cre­ation of jew­el­ry is car­ried out:

• gold — alloys based on base met­als, gild­ing or brass;

• sil­ver — alloys based on base met­als, sil­ver­ing or white bronze plat­ing, steel;

• bronze — cop­per, black­ened brass;

• old gold — pati­nat­ed brass or its coat­ing;

• old sil­ver — coat­ed with pati­nat­ed sil­ver, white bronze or pewter;

• dia­monds — acrylic or glass rhine­stones, Swarovs­ki crys­tals;

• emer­alds, rubies, sap­phires — col­ored glass;

• pearls — acrylic or Czech glass pearls of var­i­ous shades and col­ors;

• coral, turquoise, amber — col­ored wax, col­ored plas­tic, resins.

How is jewelry made?

Even the most mod­ern machines and com­put­er pro­grams can­not replace the tal­ent of an expe­ri­enced crafts­man. In the begin­ning there is a vision and an idea. The artist cre­ates a pre­lim­i­nary sketch of the dec­o­ra­tion on paper. He draws with a pen­cil the pic­ture that his imag­i­na­tion sug­gests, dis­play­ing on paper the gen­er­al appear­ance, forms and motifs.

Dur­ing the design phase, the artist’s vision takes con­crete forms. Planned:

• dec­o­ra­tion meth­ods,

• dec­o­ra­tive items,

• the num­ber, type, size and shape of the stones deposit­ed,

• types of fas­ten­ers, oth­er func­tion­al­i­ty.

The mod­el­ing process takes place using the lat­est tech­nol­o­gy — com­put­er-aid­ed design, which is called CAD.

The acces­so­ry design con­cept is ready, it is scanned and trans­ferred to a com­put­er screen, and then print­ed on a 3D print­er. The result is the first mod­el — a pro­to­type, which is the basis for mak­ing a wax mod­el.

Next, the pro­to­type is placed in a spe­cial plas­ter or sil­i­cone mass. When the form freezes, the prod­uct, which per­fect­ly repro­duces the future dec­o­ra­tion, is removed by the tech­nol­o­gist from the inside.

The wax mod­el is then hand-mount­ed on a tool that the jew­el­ers call the “Christ­mas Tree”. This is a plas­ter matrix con­tain­ing from sev­er­al to sev­er­al dozen pieces of jew­el­ry. It is placed in a spe­cial met­al sleeve, where a gyp­sum mold­ing mass is poured.

Dur­ing the fir­ing process, wax is removed and a cast­ing mold is obtained, into which gold or sil­ver is poured. After the mold has cooled, the gyp­sum is bro­ken and the cast­ing is washed. It turns out a gray and mat­te Christ­mas tree. Jew­el­ry is sep­a­rat­ed from the infu­sion sys­tem and sent to a mechan­i­cal pol­ish­ing machine, and then into the hands of a jew­el­er who sets the stones.

Despite the fact that the qual­i­ty of how gold jew­el­ry is made is checked at every stage of pro­duc­tion, noth­ing can replace the eye of an expert tech­nol­o­gist. He con­firms that the jew­el­ry meets all stan­dards so that it can be sold and the buy­er is sat­is­fied with the pur­chase.

How are rings made using traditional and modern technologies?

The old­est method of cre­at­ing rings is to roll them off a tape using pro­filed rollers and then sol­der them. The result­ing work­piece is processed and pol­ished. Then stones are placed and a pro­tec­tive dec­o­ra­tive coat­ing is applied.

How­ev­er, the rings made in this way had a weak point in the form of sol­der­ing around the perime­ter, which reduced their dura­bil­i­ty and led to break­age when adjust­ing the size. When using this method, it was not pos­si­ble to achieve the ide­al shape.

The best way to pro­duce rings, espe­cial­ly wed­ding rings, is seam­less tech­nol­o­gy. In this method, the start­ing mate­r­i­al is a gold pipe, from which a ring is cut out, which is nec­es­sary for fur­ther machin­ing on CNC machines. At the last stage, the stones are framed in a ring and pro­tec­tive and dec­o­ra­tive coat­ings are applied to them.

The main advan­tage of such rings is that they do not have a perime­ter con­nec­tion. This ensures greater strength and a per­fect­ly round shape. Such a prod­uct is much eas­i­er to increase or decrease in the future with­out the risk of break­age if it does not fit the size of the fin­ger.

Few com­pa­nies pro­duce rings by vac­u­um cast­ing due to the high labor inten­si­ty, a large share of man­u­al work, the need to make molds for any size of indi­vid­ual mod­els. This is also a tra­di­tion­al tech­nol­o­gy used in the pro­duc­tion of gold and sil­ver jew­el­ry. It allows you to use var­i­ous stone fix­tures, make seals, which is impos­si­ble with oth­er meth­ods. Once cast, the ring is machined into its final shape.

The advan­tage of this method is that there are no design restric­tions. Mod­ern cast­ing machines pro­vide excel­lent qual­i­ty cast­ing of fine-grained gold alloys and ther­mal hard­en­ing of cast wed­ding rings. A high pro­por­tion of hand­work gives these rings a spe­cial char­ac­ter.

Now you know almost every­thing about jew­el­ry and buy­ing them for your­self or for a gift will make the right choice.