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One summer, between foundation college and university I worked for an independent silver ring jeweller producing the crafts by hand to be sold in National Trust centres and gift shops. I expected each silver ring would take ages to make, and you’d start and completely finish one ring before starting more, boy was I wrong. Silver ring making was more structured than that to ensure that the ring racket remained profitable and there was enough to meet surprise demand.

The first step of the process is rolling the bulk silver wire rolls into circular formations. 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. The tapering is to make sure you end up with several rings of different sizes to cater for a variety of finger sizes.

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. Wearing an apron to protect your clothes, you lay out the raw silver rings onto a heat proof asbestos board in rows of ten and add the flux to the join of each ring. 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. Blast a stream of water at your rings afterwards.

The succeeding step is to use a hammer or mandrel to reshape the rings into their final manifestation, sand and rough edges away, and place them inside a container filled with ball bearings to complete the polishing process. I don’t have to tell you twice that this process is painstaking yet truly fascinating. In reality, the profitability here was limited as each silver ring sold for no more than 3.50 and you only received 10 pence per ring. Churning out 200 rings a day only paid 20 but the faster you worked the more you could earn.

The silver auctions you are used to are new. Learn about silver eagles.