Making jewelry with your own hands. how to make jewelry how to make silver jewelry

Let's move on to the photo report? ;)

The workshop is located at the developing Crystal plant. Since it was already getting dark, it was raining and I was late, I did not photograph it. But it is very atmospheric, so I illustrate the story with a photo from the Internet:

The plant is located near Yauza, across the river from Winzavod and Artplay. Now, when I was looking for a photo, I saw that the plant will be reconstructed: they plan to make a pleasant public space here with cafes, shops, creative offices and other things. Already last summer, fairs and festivals were held there, a lot of people visited the new place. concept and appearance reminiscent of the Flacon design factory, don't they? Competition! :)

But about the factory another time, I want to go back there when the weather is better to explore a new party place;) And now let's get back to the master class, which took place in the creative workshop. It is combined with a small but nice photo studio, so there are a lot of cameras here. varying degrees vintage, paintings and paint-splattered easels. Atmospheric place!

This is what it looks like workplace a jeweler - nothing luxurious, but not only silver is processed here, but also gold and precious stones. Below is a pedal for a grinder.

First we took a small amount of silver and melted it down.

After that, the molten mass was poured into a mold, where it froze, but not firmly. In general, silver is a rather malleable metal and can be worked with for some time without a new melting.

Having cooled the resulting "sausage" in cold water, we proceeded to the run-in. It takes place in two stages: first you need to set the width of the ring (the right side of the machine), and then the thickness (the left side). You insert the sausage into the opening, twist the handle and it crawls through the hole. The running-in occurs gradually, for each of the stages there are about 30 scrolls. That is, you can’t immediately take and flatten the metal in one scroll - then it will crack and you will have to start over.

During the last scroll, you could print on the metal (it's still soft, remember?) some kind of pattern. They offered me a piece of lace, something else - I chose a leaf, because quite recently I had a ring in the form of a twig, and I decided to make this ring on a phalanx. It turned out such an eco-theme :)

After that, with the help of a thread, I measured the girth of the finger and cut off the required amount. It was difficult, because the jigsaw must be kept strictly vertical and ensure that it does not “leave” to the side. They helped me here, since this is an important stage - the saw cuts must be perfectly even in order to connect later.

Then a ring is formed from the strip around the cone-shaped stick with the help of a soft hammer. I am very focused and tense :)

Now it's time to bleach the silver in acid in order to return the original color - it darkens after being melted down.

The next stage: grinding in several ways. First, the side faces of the ring are polished with sandpaper.

Then the outer and inner sides are polished with sandpaper twisted into a drill. The ring must be held tightly, otherwise it may fly into the eye. And this is not so simple, because it vibrates strongly under the influence of a drill - it flew away a couple of times, so I preferred to take a picture of this stage :)

After that, the ring goes through the last stage of grinding on a machine with a rapidly spinning rubber "wheel". From rapid friction, the ring instantly heats up and after each touch to the "wheel" it must be lowered into cold water.

Everything, the ring is ready! It remains only to clean it in an ultrasonic bath - leave it there for 10 minutes. You can relax and wipe the sweat of zeal from your forehead :)

And here is the result!

An indescribable feeling when you yourself do some thing: now I wear this ring without taking it off - here it is, the power of handmade. So I advise you to go to the master class, it is not at all expensive. Or an option for guys: buy a certificate for MK and give it on February 14 or March 8;)

Thanks to my jewelry mentors who helped me in creating a photo report!

Buying jewelry can be quite costly, much cheaper to make your own jewelry especially for those who like to do everything by their own hands. You can make DIY jewelry that exactly matches your style and taste. After studying a few basic methods, you will learn how to create unique DIY jewelry sets, as well as necklaces, bracelets and earrings. The profit that you can get from this type of activity is described in.

1 Part getting started with jewelry

1 Buy a jewelry set to create DIY jewelry

Crafting kits jewelry provide you with the basic materials and tools that will enable you to do it yourself. Most kits come with some basic instructions with various jewelry ideas, but you can use your imagination to create any kind of jewelry you want.Depending on what kind of jewelry you want to make, there are many options for jewelry sets.For example, there are beading jewelry sets, stuffing jewelry sets, and wire jewelry sets.

2 Select the specific jewelry project you want to try

Because there is a huge variety of possible jewelry (necklaces, bracelets, earrings) made from many possible materials (beads, wire, thread, resin, paper, etc.), choose the material and gems to create your own jewelry. hands you would like to work with. Find inspiration by visiting jewelry stores or look online on social platforms, visual organizational websites, or jewelry store websites.

3 Materials for making jewelry

Depending on what decorations you plan to make, you will probably need some basic tools to complete your project. [ Some basic tools for beginners to consider:

• Miscellaneous Pliers – Round Nose Pliers, Chain Pliers, Chain Pliers, Curved Pliers, and Nylon Pliers
• Metal ruler that measures both centimeters and inches
• Wire cutters
• Wire or wire to create the base of the jewelry
• Peg boards for wire bending

4 Buying handmade jewelry

Jewelry self made can be made from many various types consumables, but there are a few basic supplies that are used for most handmade jewelry. Jewelry kits can provide you with general or project materials, but if you're planning to start making jewelry without using a material kit, you'll need to purchase some materials on your own.

Need to buy:

• beads
• jewelry wire overall size(18, 20 and 22); 20 is better for beginners
• Earring studs
• Locks and closures
• Jump rings

5 Familiarize yourself with basic jewelry measurements

To determine how big or small you want your piece of jewelry to be, check out some basic jewelry measurements. There are the usual standard sizes for necklaces and bracelets (depending on whether the jewelry is for men or women) and what specific sizes you want to achieve.
For example, different styles necklaces - have a certain length.

Chokers are about 38 cm long, princess-style necklaces are about 45 cm long, and rope necklaces are about 86 cm long and more.
Necklaces that fall just below the collar bone tend to measure around 17 inches for women and around 50 cm for men.

The total length of the bracelets is about 18 cm for women and from 25 cm for men.

6 Learn Basic Jewelry Making Skills and Techniques

To begin the process of creating your own jewelry, you must learn some basic skills and techniques to successfully complete your project. General skills and techniques to be learned include making jump rings, cutting wire, wiring, cutting and using fixtures and peg, etc.
To learn these different techniques, you can read jewelry books, search study guides and hold workshops on jewelry making.
Search the internet for instructions on how to make the specific earrings, bracelet, ring, or other types of jewelry you want to try.

7 Gather the necessary materials

Once you have selected the jewelry project you want to make, all necessary materials. Again, your materials may come from a jewelry making kit, or you can research the style of the jewelry, determine the difficulty level, and then purchase the required materials yourself.
For example, to start creating charm earrings, you first need to choose the materials you want to use. The project you want to create can be found on the Internet, in craft stores or jewelry stores. Next, you need to select your earring results, which are the earring parts.
When you're ready to start making your jewelry, move on to the instructions you've purchased on how to make a piece of jewelry.

8 Practice Technique Before Doing Work With Expensive Materials

As previously mentioned, for wire jewelry, practical wire is a good idea to practice and refine your jewelry making skills before moving on to bending and cutting more expensive wire. Thus, you can hone your skills with large quantity repetitions, so your final product will be of higher quality.
No matter what jewelry material you use, always try to practice this technique first before using your actual precious jewelry materials.
Thin copper wire is always good choice for practical use.

part 2 making earrings

1 Try Swarovski Crystal Earrings

These earrings are fairly easy to make and require only two crystals for your purposes, two jump rings and two earring leads. You will also need a set of pliers to bend the jewelry in the right places.

2 Add crystals to the rings

Use your pliers to flip over and open the two rings. Feed the crystals on from the ring through the holes.Make sure that if the crystals have a clear front and back, the front will show in front once you close the ring and put on the earring. If not, you can always open the ring again and turn the crystal on the ring.

3 Add the found earrings to the rings

Once the crystals are on the racing rings, slide the earrings off the ring. Use pliers to close and secure the rings.
This earring project can take less than five minutes and at the end you have a unique pair of beautiful earrings.

3 part making a bracelet

1 Try to make a beaded bracelet

Simple beaded bracelet great way start making handmade bracelets. For this bracelet you will need beads of your choice:

beading kit

wire cutters

crimp beads

rings

closing clasp

2 Add beads to the bracelet.

Start by placing beads on the wire to create your own jewelry still attached to the spool. Keeping the wires attached to the coil allows you to change the length of the bracelet depending on your goals.

3 Determine the length of the bracelets

Find out how long the clasp and ring will be added to your final product bracelet, keep that in mind and remove some beads equivalent to that length.

4 Add a ring to the end of your bracelet

Add on the crimp bead and ring to the end of your bracelet. Leave yourself some space at the end of the wire. Take the end of the wire tag and thread it back through the end bead.

5 Attach the bracelet

Continue winding the wire through the rest of the beads until the jump ring is stretched against the wire. Use your crimping pliers to crimp the crimp washer and secure the crimp washer. You can also cut off excess wire near the crimp bead to keep you from shaking. Repeat this process on the other side of the bracelet. Add a clasp to the end of the bracelet. Add a clasp to one of the End Jump Rings, using pliers to twist and open the Jump Ring, then feed the clasp onto the ring. Close the jump ring and connect the bracelet.
This same technique can be used with a long wire and lots of beads to make a simple necklace.

Making jewelry is a long and painstaking process that requires several years of training, knowledge of physics, chemistry and the availability of expensive special equipment. We know this and spend hours looking for the desired jewelry in stores. Many even develop a sketch on their own and turn to a jewelry workshop so that the master makes a dream jewelry for them.

Times are changing, and now everyone can be a jewelry master. In order to make a real silver ring with our own design, we turned to a jewelry school ARGENTARIUM and made sure that it is not only interesting and exciting, but also really easy.

(Total 26 photos)

Before starting work, we were shown decorations made by instructors and students of the school. There are many options for decorations, and all this can be done with your own hands.

Despite such a variety of possibilities, we still wanted the ring. We decided that, if you like it, we will return a little later for the pendant.

The first surprise: it turned out that it was not necessary to melt the silver in order to give it the desired shape. The decoration is made of plastic Precious Metal Clay (PMC) silver, which was invented by the specialists of the Japanese company Mitsubishi Materials Corporation. Made from a mixture of tiny particles of silver, water and a non-toxic plasticizer, PMC is as easy to work with as regular plasticine.

The whole process is simple and straightforward: you need to come up with a piece of jewelry, make it, burn it in an oven (water and plasticizer will burn out, and silver particles will firmly sinter with each other), and at the end you will get silver item 999th test. Modern alchemy at its finest! Before starting work, the head of the school, Evgenia, showed us what tools we can use to create exactly the decoration we want.

Surprise two: most of the tools for work can be found at hand: any texture can be “printed”, and to cut the desired shape, an awl or blade will do.

Various dies for making imprints and imprints on silver mass before firing.

To create volumetric products, you can use liquid silver in a syringe. Silver paste is squeezed onto the cork base with a syringe. During the firing process, this base burns off, and you get a hollow silver bead, similar to those that were created by silversmiths hundreds of years ago and were called "filigree".

There are thin plates-leaves of plastic silver, from which you can fold any figure, for example, origami. Isn't it a miracle to build yourself a crane or a boat of pure silver?

And you can use dried leaves as a blank for future decoration. If the leaf is covered with liquid silver, burned, the leaf will burn, and you will get a unique pendant or pendant that completely repeats all natural curves and textures, which are simply impossible to make on your own.

In jewelry business precious stones nowhere. Multi-colored inserts can be added to the design of any jewelry: cubic zircons (cZ) or other laboratory stones that can withstand high temperatures.

Of course, it was very tempting to make a unique pendant for ourselves, but we came for the ring and decided to make it anyway.

Before you start working with ductile silver, you need to correctly calculate the size of the ring, because during the firing process, the mass shrinks by 16%.

Lubricate the board with a special compound so that the silver does not stick, and go!

Roll out the RMS into a pancake of the calculated size. Cards glued in several pieces on the sides of the blank allow us to adjust the thickness of the future ring and roll out the silver in an even layer. A simple life hack, proven by practice 🙂

PMC silver can be cut, rolled, textured and shaped into any shape. Surprise three: it is especially pleasant that ductile silver forgives any mistakes - after drying, it is easily restored with water and again takes on a working state. You have the opportunity to remake the decoration before firing, if you don’t like something in the original blank, or add additional elements.

We created a floral ring using a rubber stamp.

After we have obtained the desired impression and closed the ring, it must be dried.

Roasting can be done different ways. Professionals use a jewelry muffle furnace, and for beginners, a more budgetary “home” option is suitable - a ceramic burner of a special design that runs on dry alcohol.

We fired the ring in a muffle furnace. With the right temperature and time conditions, the water is completely evaporated, the organic plasticizer burns out, and the silver particles fuse with each other, forming a solid metal at the outlet, retaining the entire design, down to fingerprints.

After 25 minutes, our ring was “baked” 🙂

Now we remove the oxide film - a white coating that appears on the surface of the product during combustion. Then, with the help of jewelry tools, we bring the decoration to mind.

The fourth surprise: after firing with metal, you can do anything you like. Drill, saw, grind, enamel, blacken and, of course, polish to a mirror finish!

Using a steel brush, we clean off the oxide film.

Sanding with sandpaper.

A black special solution - among jewelers it is called "sulfuric liver", and another remedy is available to mere mortals - sulfuric ointment, which is sold in any pharmacy. By the way, the blackening of jewelry is also a whole art. Blackening emphasizes the structure and ornament of the decoration: depending on the technique, the result can be so different that a separate master class was devoted to this matter.

We polish the ring with an agate tool to give it a shine.

And here it is - the ring of dreams! Made by own design and by hand!

If you wish, you can learn to knit, sew, weave beads and burn pots. It seems that the creation of jewelry is something beyond ordinary human capabilities, somewhere at the intersection of alchemy and magic. In fact, everyone can take a master class and make their own jewelry. The technology turns out to be surprisingly simple, especially when explained good master. Our teacher Evgenia was able to interest even skeptical students. It seems that now half of the group will definitely return for a pendant for their author's collection.

Perhaps we are too 🙂 And for the first visit to any master class, we give our readers a 10% discount using the promo code BIGJEWEL (you need to enter it in the registration form for the class).

Silver Clay - great material to get started with silver, but you can also cut, melt, and bond hard pieces of silver with a hacksaw, soldering iron, or hammer and anvil. Try to combine techniques and you will get unexpected results.

Steps

Modeling from silver clay

Decide how you will heat the clay. After shaping the clay, you will need to heat it up to high temperature so that all the binder material melts and only silver remains. Some types of metal clay can be heated on a gas stove, while others can only be heated with a gas burner or even in a kiln. Before choosing your clay, determine what temperature you can reach.

• If you are heating clay on a gas stove, you will need a stainless steel grate.
• If you plan to use a burner, look for brick or stone that can withstand the heat.
• It is not recommended to fire large or thick objects in the kiln.
• To get an idea of ​​what temperature you can reach on your stovetop, heat a small, thin-walled aluminum pan over high heat and hold an infrared thermometer near the surface as it heats up.

1. Buy silver clay. You may have to order it online as many stores don't stock it. Pure silver clay is sold more often, but the resulting jewelry will be less durable.

   Make your desired decoration out of clay. Can be sculpted by hand or special tools. You can add details with a knife or wire, or carve from clay different figures through a stencil.

   Dry and sand the clay. Let the clay dry overnight or dry with a hair dryer. Sand the surface with fine grit sandpaper.

   Heat the clay with a torch. If you have a burner, place the clay on the brick and the brick on a heat-resistant surface. Hold the burner two inches away from the clay and heat it up until it ignites. It will start to burn, then it will glow red from incandescence, and then the light will become weak. Heat the clay for at least five minutes, or as long as the instructions on the package say.

   • Take your eyes off from time to time so they can rest.

2. Heat the clay on the stove. If you have a gas stove, you will need to do the following:

   Heat the silver in the kiln. If you have a kiln, you will be able to follow the exact instructions for firing the clay. Silver reaches its maximum strength when fired for a long time at a low temperature, but there are more quick ways to achieve result. A special jewelry oven will heat the silver faster, but a regular one will work too.

   Cool the metal (optional). It is recommended to let the silver cool on its own, but if you are in a hurry, you can dip the hot silver into cold water (but don't touch it immediately afterwards). Cooling can affect the structure of the silver, and it will break if you decide to reheat it, but thorough drying will help to avoid this.

   Polish the surface (optional). After firing, the silver will be white and slightly cloudy. If you want it to shine, buff the surface with a copper or steel bristle brush. You can also use a polishing machine with polishing powder.

   Wash the item in warm soapy water. This will wash away any remaining polish from the surface. Wipe with a dry, clean cloth, preferably wool or suede.

   Attach a hook to each earring. Drill a small hole in each earring, insert a hook, twist it or secure it in some other way so that it does not come off. If you are not making earrings, skip this step.

Silver soldering

Gather the necessary materials and tools. If you want to connect several elements, the easiest way to do this is with a fuse. Of course, the process will require careful preparation, as well as the following materials and tools:

1. Prepare your workspace. You will need a well-ventilated room and a heat-resistant table, as well as brick or heat-resistant stone. It is important to wear safety goggles to protect yourself from small particles that will fly during fine work. Also prepare gloves, an apron from denim or leather and tight-fitting but not synthetic clothing.

   • You will need a water tank where you can rinse the items. If you are working in an area with flammable materials, have a fire extinguisher ready.

2. Clean the silver and apply flux. If the silver is dirty or often held in your hands, treat it with a special solution that washes away grease. If the silver has darkened due to oxidation, immerse it in an etching solution. Once the silver is clean, rub the flux into the areas where the silver will connect to the other piece.

   • If you have a flux in powder, you must first get a liquid or paste from it. Read the manufacturer's instructions.

3. Start soldering silver. If you have never soldered anything before, first find out how it is done, or follow our instructions:

   • Carefully place items on the heat-resistant soldering stone, then use tweezers to place a piece of solder (or drip a little flux) on top.
   • Heat the item from a distance of 10 centimeters, trying to melt the thickest part of the silver. Do not heat solder directly. To prevent thin pieces of silver from melting, hold them with tweezers.

4. Rinse, pickle and rinse again. When the solder melts and holds the two pieces of silver together, turn off the burner and allow the solder to harden for 1-2 minutes. With copper tongs, immerse the silver first in water, then in an etching solution to remove traces of oxidation. Rinse again with water and dry with a cloth.

   • Avoid contact of the pickling solution with skin or clothing as it is highly caustic.
   • Pliers not made of copper may react with the pickling solution, damaging the metal.
   • If you like the aged look of your silver, you don't need to soak the item in an etching solution.

If we try to imagine the process of making jewelry, then most of us will probably have an image of a gray-haired craftsman who, armed with a magnifying glass and a set of tools, alone creates rings or pendants: pours, bends, solders. But although, of course, such masters still exist, the main assortment of jewelry stores is done in a completely different way.

1) The first step Production is always preceded by artistic intent. First, the artist creates a sketch, which is to be evaluated both by production workers (can it be done?) and marketers (will there be demand?).

And in order to understand exactly how, PM visited the production site of the Diamant plant, located in the village of Krasnoye-on-Volga, one of the main jewelry centers of Russia. Why did the concentration of the production of rings, earrings and necklaces happen in this locality 34 km from Kostroma, no one knows for sure. Precious metals are not mined here, stones are not cut, but back in the 16th-17th centuries. /bm9icg===>ekah the first workshops sprang up here. Diamant also grew out of a workshop, but now it is a modern industrial enterprise with about 1,800 employees. But even with such a number of employees, it would not have been possible to make each of the 6,000,000 products a year exclusively by hand. We need truly industrial technologies, which, however, would allow the piece of jewelry to remain the embodiment of beauty and grace.

1. First step. Production is always preceded by artistic intent. First, the artist creates a sketch, which is to be evaluated both by production workers (can it be done?) and marketers (will there be demand?).

Handsomely? Technological?

Therefore, of course, everything begins with the idea of ​​a jeweler artist, who draws a sketch of the future jewelry. “True, the artist must be a bit of a technologist,” says Oleg Shtyrkunov, the technologist of the enterprise, who kindly agreed to be our guide, “after all, what looks beautiful on paper cannot always be realized in production. Of course, we do our best to combine the artist's thought with technological possibilities, but sometimes it doesn't work."

2. Into the brain of the computer. The work of 3D modelers is one of the most important stages in the creation of a piece of jewelry. The language of aesthetics is translated into the language of production, and the decoration is worked out down to the smallest technical details.

Therefore, one of key points 3D modeling of the future product becomes the realization of the artist's idea - it is at this stage that the artistic idea is combined with the requirements of production workers and the sales service. The 3D modeler sets the exact dimensions of the seats for the stones, and the tolerances here are of the order of 10 microns, otherwise the stone will either not be inserted or it will easily fly out of the jewelry. Upon completion of all approvals, the 3D model is sent for prototyping.

3. Rubber and wax. The rubber matrix gives birth to a wax cast, which will become a unique prototype of jewelry made of precious metal. After the impression leaves the matrix, the skillful hands of the masters will remove the flash and correct the surfaces.

Prototyping is the printing of a model on a 3D printer, and two technologies are used. The first is plastic printing, in which individual “pixels” on a layer of liquid mass are cured with spot UV radiation. The second is more like traditional inkjet printing: the head coats the surface layer by layer with tiny droplets of wax, with the more refractory blue wax being used to create the promo itself, and the white one for support (it will be melted later). Both methods have their disadvantages: wax gives less high-quality surfaces (they can be corrected manually with a special tool), and plastic is good for everyone, but ...

The pro-models are poured with gypsum-based molding compound to create silver casting molds. It will, of course, not yet be a piece of jewelry, but only an intermediate model. So, in the manufacture of molds, wax easily melts and flows out, and plastic partially burns and leaves ash, which can ultimately lead to casting defects. And yet, when modeling products with finer details, preference is given to plastic.

4. The fate of the Christmas tree. Only the tip of the "Christmas tree" trunk sticks out of the hole in the flask filled with molding mass. In the oven, all the wax will flow out through this hole, leaving cavities inside for future casting and possibly stones if they were inserted into the models.

Hands are indispensable

What will come out of silver is still a rather crude product. It bears traces of the rough discreteness of 3D printing, and these traces will have to be removed manually. “In general, I would like to emphasize that with all the industrial scale of jewelry production,” says Oleg Shtyrkunov, “the role manual labor, including highly skilled, in production is still great.” In addition to correcting surfaces, careful processing and adjustment require seats for stones - taking into account shrinkage during casting, shrinkage of wax, shrinkage of metal. The stone should not fall out or crack. The processing of seats is trusted by the most experienced craftsmen, because ultimately the quality of the future product depends on them.

When the silver model is ready, it is placed inside a pack of raw rubber plates. Soft rubber tightly fits the metal, repeating its relief. The rubber briquette is sent to the vulcanizer, where it is subjected to high pressure and temperatures and returned back in the form of a rather solid monolithic brick. Now the task is not only to extract the silver model from the mold, but also to open the mold very competently, according to a certain algorithm, turning it into two halves that fit well with each other. It is necessary to process it in such a way as to achieve good metal shedding and at the same time avoid the appearance of a large number burr.

5. Metal and vacuum. The flask from which the wax has poured out is placed in another furnace, where casting takes place. Under vacuum conditions, molten gold or silver will fill the voids just left by the wax. After casting, the flask is cooled or allowed to cool.

Will rings, elements of earrings and necklaces, pendants be cast in these molds? No, of course not. Just another intermediate model. But each such model will become a prototype for a single product. Models are made from casting wax using special injectors. Heated wax under pressure is injected into the mold, and this operation can be carried out both manually and on semi-automatic lines, if particularly precise wax pressure and volume parameters are required. Of course, one rubber matrix is ​​used to cast many models, but their number depends on the complexity of the product. Complex matrices last only a couple of weeks, but rubber molds for more simple products can work for years.

6. Freedom from shackles. "Herringbone" was revived in gold or silver. The surrounding mold mass is washed away with water. First just from the tap, then with a pressurized jet. Now the products are waiting for tumbling and finishing.

Emptiness instead of "Christmas tree"

Of course, models melted from wax are subject to additional manual processing - flash is removed, surfaces are corrected. And then comes the most, perhaps, enchanting stage mass production cast jewelry. In a special section, the girls, using a device resembling a wood burning apparatus, solder the models to a thick wax rod. It turns out that the production workers call the "herringbone" - and indeed, the rod, surrounded by "twigs" from the models, strongly resembles a decorated Christmas tree. The rod is stuck into the plastic base, which further enhances the similarity. The number of branches varies depending on the size of future products - there can be from ten to many dozens.

From wax to gold. "Christmas trees" from casting wax are formed using an apparatus similar to a wood burning device. Models soldered to the rod can be a separate piece of jewelry, or they can be elements of a prefabricated structure (for example, earrings).

The “Herringbone” is weighed and, using the proportion, the amount of the required precious metal is calculated - so that there is no overfilling or underfilling. Then the "herringbone" is placed in a cylindrical cassette - a flask - and poured with molding mass, again based on gypsum. Here it is worth noting that if a lot of small stones are supposed to be inserted into the cast product, the technology of wax casting with stones is used: a “Christmas tree” is immersed in the flask, in the wax elements of which pebbles are already inserted.

This is done so that subsequently the stones are actually fused into the surface of the product - the creation of mechanical prongs for them would not give the necessary strength, and there would be a risk of stones falling out. The flask is placed in an oven and heated for several hours (usually at night). At this time, two processes take place: the mold mass is cured, and the wax flows out of the cavities occupied by it through a hole in the base. Just as in the frozen lava of Pompeii, voids were found formed by the bodies of people burned to the ground, here we will find a void in the place of the wax “herringbone”.

Finally gold!

The next stage is the vacuum casting furnace. Gold or silver is melted in the crucible located in the upper part of the furnace, but for the time being it is closed with a special rod. The flask removed from the furnace is placed in the so-called glass under the crucible. Air is pumped out of the glass, the rod is removed, and under the action of gravity and rarefaction, the metal is literally sucked into the mold.

It all depends on the design. Of course, the list of production operations used in the manufacture of jewelry is not limited to casting. Large stones are inserted into some products, sometimes they are engraved, the surfaces of others are covered with rhodium to give a noble sheen.

The casting process is completed. If there are already stones inside the flask, it must be allowed to cool: instant cooling will cause the stones to crack. If there are no stones, you can cool quickly. And then something prosaic and magical happens at the same time. First, the flask is simply placed under a tap of water, and the outer part of the mold is quickly washed out and removed. Further, in a special chamber, the remains of the molding mass are washed out with the help of a high pressure water jet. And we see the Christmas tree again, only now it consists of gold or silver! But soon it will be over.

Already cast ornaments or their parts are cut off from the Christmas tree with special scissors. At the same time, the so-called feeders are removed - technological elements, which are actually casts of the channels through which the metal (and earlier wax) entered the cast decoration. The places of their joints with the products are polished.

Precious Dust

Of course, cast jewelry taken out of the oven does not yet have the presentation that we are used to seeing in jewelry stores. They need several stages of tumbling, that is, grinding and polishing in drums filled with abrasives. Drums are wet (they are filled with liquid along with the abrasive) and dry - there is no liquid there anymore. Abrasives have different shape and purpose: it can be cone-shaped plastic granules or ground walnut peel.

But still, the final brilliance of jewelry is acquired at the stage of manual finishing, where gold and silver surfaces are polished with various soft bristle tools. The hands of the workers in this workshop are covered with a layer of metal dust, and when employees wash their hands at the end of the working day, the flowing water does not go down the drain, but is collected in special tanks, where it is then settled.

Then, particles of precious metals that have got there are extracted from the sediment. “Utilization of waste of precious metals,” says Oleg Shtyrkunov, “is an important part of the production process. With a certain regularity, Diamant conducts a general cleaning of all surfaces in production workshops in order to collect valuable waste. Large jewelry enterprises in the West now even use special devices that filter the air in the ventilation system so that precious metals do not fly “down the chimney”, and we may soon have to think about such a system.”