One summer, between school and university I worked for an independent jeweler making silver rings by hand for sale in National Trust centres and small gift outlets. Now I thought just about every ring would take a long time to create, and you'd begin and totally finish one ring before beginning another, how wrong I was. The silver ring making procedure had been a great deal more organised than that to ensure output was profitable and the stocks were kept high enough for sudden demand.
The first part of the process is turning the basic silver wire bought in big rolls of different weights into ring shapes. This is done using a specific steel rod shaped like quite a long taper. The raw silver wire is secured tightly at both ends and then by using a twisting handle at the opposite end of your vice it is turned and twisted tightly in to a spiral until each turn of the spiral is as near to a ring shape as possible. The tapering is to ensure you end up having several rings of numerous sizes to take into consideration a variety of finger sizes.
As soon as the spiral of silver is cut down the middle leaving a few un-joined silver loops you next need to learn the way to hold a jeweller's solder safely, and the way to use 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 of each and every ring. Moving carefully along each ring, you heat the silver ring up utilizing a circular motion until its molten hot but is 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 directly into boric acid to pickle and cleanse away the flux. Rinse them in water afterwards.
Next thing with your batch of silver rings is usually to reshape them using a soft hammer and mandrel, sand away any abrasive edges then polish them up in barrels filled with ballbearings over night.