A handcrafted wedding ring is a beautiful and detailed piece of workmanship that takes years to learn and many time consuming stages to perfect.
The first stage of a wedding ring is of course the design. Harriet, Antoinette, Rebecca and Alice work with each of their customers, taking into account each one's ideas, style and budget to produce the final design.
Next the metal is sourced from a bullion dealer, perhaps arriving in basic shapes, commonly sheet and wire. Often it is necessary to work, for example, the wire into smaller shapes and this is done by pulling it through drawing plates or squeezing sheet through a heavy duty mangle known as a mill. Or occasionally gold is melted down to form the wedding ring's basic shape.
All through the process, the metal is regularly annealled which means it is heated to a very high temperature using a jeweller's flame then treated in a dilute sulphuric acid mixture to remove surface oxidisation.
The band is usually formed by hammering it around a ring mandrel and joined it together - a very difficult and skilled job. It is particularly tricky to fit it all together straight and square and at the same time keep the shank exactly circular and to a specific ring size. The joints are made with intense heat and hallmark quality solder of the same metal type as the wedding ring.
Next is the long process of filing then fine filing then sanding with emery paper and finally polishing paper until the wedding ring is formed.
In the UK it is a legal requirement that all precious metal jewellery is hallmarked with the maker's mark, date, metal type and place of Assay. Our work is at this stage hallmarked in London with the letters HK in a slightly rounded rectangular box. Wedding rings are tested by the London Assay Office to check that the metal is as stated - anything else and the wedding ring is returned to the makers crushed!
If there are stone to be set into the wedding ring, this happens next. Small amounts of metal are pushed up over the stone using specialist tools to form a lip. The wedding ring will need more finishing to be made ready for polishing.
Hand engraving happens now with special swan-neck engravers for those tricky letters inside of the shank. There is only a choice of one slightly italised font for this engraving.
Finally, polishing is done with a polishing wheel and polishing compound eg rouge - rather a long and messy process but wonderful to see the finished wedding ring coming to life.
Our workshop is open to the public and you can see our gold and silversmiths at work
