One summer, between foundation college and university I worked for a jewelry’s shop manufacturing silver rings by hand to sell in National Trust center and gift shops. By my estimation, each silver ring would require epochs of sweaty toil, and each ring was made from start to finish starting the next, but I was infinitely mistaken. Manufacturing silver rings was more like an assembly line so that uniformity and profitability were guaranteed 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.

 

Cut each ring down the center to create half-rings; at this point you will have to learn to use a jeweler’s solder and flux with the steadiness of a sharpshooter. Lay the raw silver rings on a heat resistant board in rows of 10 and throw in the flux to the joints. 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.

 

Once the splicing is complete, place each ring inside a boric acid solution to wash away the flux. Finally, rinse each ring in clean water.

 

Next, you need to use a soft mallet and mandrel to shape the silver rings into your desired shape, get rid of any rough edges, and use ball bearing filled barrels to polish them over night. Needless to say the whole process is absolutely fascinating but needs a lot of patience, dexterity, attention to detail and time. 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. I earned about 20 a day but I enjoyed it thoroughly. I supposed if I had worked faster I could have earned more.

 

Just as washing clothes in the right temperature and with the right colors will help maintain an item of clothing, so does watching what you do with your sterling silver jewelry. Silver jewelry will always tarnish this is because there is sulphur in the air and this sulphur reacts with silver and gives a compound called silver sulphide or as we know it tarnishing which can be recognized as black or brown colors on our silver jewelry.

 

By using a simple silver cloth this has tarnish resistant’s in it that will remove all traces of tarnish by simply buffing the piece of jewelry. However by wearing your piece of jewelry in places such as the swimming pool, hot tub or when using household cleaning products for instance bleach, there is a chemical in bleach called chlorine which is also found in swimming pools too.  The chlorine will actually dissolve the metal and change the color of it and will often take off finish on the piece of jewelry that naturally protects it from tarnishing 24/7.

 

What you will notice with items that have become tarnish is because they have been left unworn for a while.  It often does not happen with jewelry that you are wear consistently over a few days. There is actually something within the sea air that causes silver to blacken too.  What some people have found that when they are at home their charm bracelet is fine, once they have travelled to work and been there all day, there will actually be a dark ring left around there wrist and their bracelet has also become discolored.  So there will be higher particles of sulphur in the air at work that do react with jewelry and unfortunately we cannot stop them.

 

What we can do is prevent wearing our jewelry in areas that will actually discolor our item permanently that we may never get the original look and shine back period.  Refrain from wearing jewelry in the places mentioned above and make sure you invest in a good silver polishing cloth and take care of your jewelry.