Starting out, the width of the ring is described on
the outside of the wax tube. The ring blank is cut off. Then the
ring tube is sized to just shy of the correct finger size.
The rough shape of the ring is then carved.
Placement of stones and any design embellishments are now carved in place.
The wax model is finished. All the stones can
be laid in place, and you can get a very good idea of what the final ring will
look like. It is at this point that the customer is called to view the
wax. Any modifications are done now. The wax is the ring the
customer will get. Right now it is wax- the next time they see it is when
it will be in metal with all the stones set.
After the wax model is approved, a thick wax wire,
called a sprue, is attached to the bottom of the ring and then is attached to a
sprue base. A steel cylinder is placed on the base and the cylinder is
filled with plaster, called investment.
It takes an hour for the investment to set, at which
point it is placed in the kiln, which is set to 300N. It remains in there
for 5 hours: one hour at 300, one hour at 700, two hours at 1375, and then
cool down to 1000 for one hour.
At the end of the cooling down period, the crucible
is placed in the cradle of the casting unit, and the metal is melted. Gold
liquefies at about 1900N. As soon as the metal melts, the cylinder is put
in front of the crucible, the holding pin released, and…
the spring loaded arm spins the cylinder around and
throws the melted metal into the cylinder that use to have the wax model in
it. This is the ‘Lost Wax Casting’ process, for the simple reason that the
wax is forever lost. In its place is a metal ring.
From here the sprue gets cut off the bottom of the
ring. The ring is weighed. Precious metals are weighed in
pennyweight, (dwt.). ( There are 20dwt in one oz of gold.). Next, the ring
is cleaned and polished. The channels that the stones will be set in are
gone over so that they will reflect light up into the stones. And finally,
the stones get mounted into the setting, or set into the mounting,
whatever. The smallest stones are usually set first, with the main stone
being the last to go in.
And here you have the final masterpiece.
Pictured are two views of one ring. There are about forty hours of labor
involved in the production of the ring pictured above.
