HOW WE MAKE JEWELRY

From Raw Gold To Finished Products
From Raw gold to finished products, many of our designs are made in our family-run jewelry factory. The method we use is called Lost Wax Casting which goes back thousands of years. We begin the process by making a wax mold for each ring. The wax is placed into a flask and then into an oven and burned out at 1300 degrees. The wax melts away leaving a cavity which we then pour gold into. After a variety of grinding and sanding steps, the ring is now ready for stone setting. This is where the ring really comes to life. The stones are handset. We then polish the ring to a fine finish and another creation is born.
  It all begins here, CAD computer aid design, where a file is created and cut on a milling machine. Not all designs are created this way. Some are still created by the old method which is to carve by hand or make the original model in metal.
Milling the wax model.
Wax carving.
Mold Making
To produce a jewelry item, you must first design an original item. Then the item must be packed tightly with raw rubber inside a metal frame. After heating and curing the rubber for about one hour, the ring is ready to be cut out of the cured rubber
Cutting The Mold
Now it is time to cut the rubber and remove the original model. This is not as easy as it may seem, cutting a mold properly takes many years of practice. Some molds have up to 8 individual pieces that have to fit together like a puzzle.

Injecting The Wax
Now that the original model has been successfully cut out, a cavity is left in the rubber mold which we will inject wax into. Hot wax is forced into the cavity by pressure with a commercial wax injector
Wax pin touchup.
Single Ring Tree
Each model is attached to a wax sprue forming a wax tree.
A metal flask is placed around the tree making a water tight container
to prepare for the next step.
Mixing The Investment
The wax tree is placed inside a steel flask and a plaster like solution is poured into the flask.
Trapped air bubbles are removed by a vacuum chamber.
Flask are burned out at 1350 degrees. Wax melts away and leaves a cavity for the gold to be poured into. This is where the term, Lost Wax Casting comes from.
Gold is poured into the cavity with the help of a vacuum which sucks the molten gold into the mold.
Blasting away the investment.
Gold tree. The results are a gold ring tree exactly like the wax tree that we
started with.

Cutting
The rings are now cut off the sprue with hydraulic cutters.
Roughing
Each ring is now hammered flat and rounded on a ring stick, then sanded and shaped to prepare for the tumbling process.
Grinding the sprue but.
1 of 10 different roughing steps.
Sanding the inside.
1 of 10 different roughing steps.
Lapping the side.
1 of 10 different roughing steps.

Tumbling
The tumbling process is next. This is a series of rough to fine coarse media that takes about three days to complete. The results are a ring that is bright and shiny and ready for stone setting.
Each setting is drilled and the stones are set.
Polishing
After setting , the ring is now ready for polishing. Polishing is about a 10 step process of several grits of abrasives until a fine finish is accomplished.

 
Polishing
Cleaning
The last process is to thoroughly clean the product in an ultrasonic cleaning machine, dried and ready for sell.
Finished Ring