SawuGo — Handmade Silver Jewellery Craft

How handmade silver jewellery is made, stamped and cared for

Purity stamps, bench work, home care

A stamp on silver is a number about content, not about worth.

The bench treats annealing and soldering as one sequence: soften, form, and solder each seam at a falling temperature.

Home care is mostly subtraction — water, a soft cloth and a closed bag — plus knowing which cleaners not to use.

Reading a stamp: 999, 925, 835 and 800

Each number is a fineness — parts per thousand of pure silver — and the lower the number, the harder the piece.

Sterling silver is 925 parts per thousand: 92.5% silver alloyed with 7.5% copper. That copper is the reason a sterling ring survives daily wear, while 999 silver at 99.9% purity bends and takes marks. The 835 and 800 alloys run further the other way — 83.5% and 80% silver, more alloying metal, harder pieces — and they turn up on older continental European jewellery.

A stamp is read as content, not as quality. A 925 band is not a better silver than an 800 band; it is a softer, more wearable alloy, and 999 is used where form does the work — beads, chain, decorative elements.

Tarnish follows the same logic in reverse. Pieces worn often tarnish slower because skin contact rubs the sulfide layer away as fast as it forms, while pieces in an airtight bag with an anti-tarnish strip change surface at a different rate again.

999 — fine silver, 99.9% pure: very soft, marks easily, used for beads and chain.

925 — sterling, the wearable standard for rings and most jewellery.

835 — 83.5% silver: harder, common on older continental pieces.

800 — 80% silver: hardest of the common alloys, often with a slightly yellowish cast.

Annealing silver on the bench

Sterling silver anneals at roughly 600–650 °C, and that temperature is how a work-hardened ring gets soft enough to form.

Work-hardening is the normal state of a piece being made: every filing, sanding and burnishing pass leaves the metal resisting further deformation. The remedy is annealing — heat the silver to a dull red in the 600–650 °C band for sterling, then quench, and softness returns for the next forming step.

Colour is the reading. A dull red, not a bright one: past that the surface scales and oxidises, and the piece has to be pickled clean again. The quench afterwards locks the soft state in place; silver is not steel, so the quench exists to stop further grain growth rather than to harden anything.

Fine silver anneals in the same neighbourhood of temperature but takes marks far faster in use, so a 999 ring that has been repeatedly annealed and reworked needs more attention later than a sterling band of the same shape.

The bench in numbered steps

Hard, medium and easy solder

Silver solders are graded by flow point, and the grading exists so an earlier seam does not reflow while a later one is made.

Hard solder flows at the highest temperature of the set, easy solder at the lowest, medium in between. The step down between grades is what makes a multi-seam ring possible: solder the first seam with hard, move to medium, then easy, and each earlier joint stays put because its flow point sits above the temperature of the joint being made next.

Flux is refreshed at every stage and the surface is cleaned where the solder has to wet. The piece is supported so the seam closes rather than gaps, and quenching between passes keeps each stage's surface ready for the next.

Hard solder — highest flow point; used for the first seam of a ring or any joint later work will heat again.
Medium solder — middle flow point; the workhorse seam on a band with several joints.
Easy solder — lowest flow point; used last, on joints that will not be heated again.

Making a ring from sheet or wire, in order

The bench order is fixed: size the blank, anneal, form, hard-solder the seam, file the profile, finish, and only then think about polish.

Each stage leaves the piece in a state the next stage can work with, and each stage has a failure it is checked against. Working a ring out of sequence usually shows up later as a seam that moves, a band that springs open or a profile that goes flat where the metal should stay round.

Sizing is the first place mistakes cost metal. A strip sawn short cannot be stretched into a ring; it has to be extended, re-soldered or scrapped.

Size the blank — measure the finger at room temperature, add the wall thickness times pi (4.7 mm for 1.5 mm sheet) and saw the strip; about 10 minutes. Failure modes: blank cut short, warm-finger measurement giving a loose band.
Anneal the strip — heat to a dull red at 600–650 °C and quench; about 2–3 minutes. Failure modes: strip left too cool to close, oxide scale that must be pickled off before forming.
Form and square the seam — bend to a circle, file the ends flat and parallel; about 10–15 minutes. Failure modes: ends not square, visible gap, solder balling on the outside of the joint.
Hard-solder the joint — hard solder, fresh flux, piece supported while the solder flows; about 5 minutes. Failure modes: joint reflows on the next pass, moved while the solder ran, flux burnt black before the seam closed.
File the profile — outside seam worked level with the band, inside rounded; about 15 minutes. Failure modes: flat spot on a round band, thickness lost at one point of the ring.
Finish and store — polish inside first, then outside, dry fully, bag with an anti-tarnish strip. Failure modes: abrasive left on the surface, tarnish that a home polish no longer removes and needs the bench.

Tarnish, and what wearing a piece does to it

Tarnish is silver sulfide: it forms where silver meets sulfur compounds in the air, and it is the layer most people call blackening.

A piece worn often tarnishes slower than the same piece in a drawer. Skin contact removes the sulfide layer as fast as it forms, which is why a frequently worn ring keeps a brighter surface than an identical band kept in a box.

Storage decides the rest. An airtight bag with an anti-tarnish strip slows the reaction measurably; a paper box, an open drawer or a display case exposed to air does not.

Patina is not the same thing as damage. Tarnish left in the recesses of an engraved surface is often what makes the pattern read, and a polish that removes all of it removes that depth too — so the decision to clean is a design decision as much as a maintenance one.

Fineness and solder grades

Fineness and solder grades at the bench
Mark or material	What the number says	Hardness and wear	Working point	Where you meet it
999	99.9% pure silver	very soft, marks easily	anneals in the same band as sterling	beads, chain, decorative elements
925	92.5% silver, 7.5% copper	standard wearable alloy	anneals at about 600–650 °C	rings and most jewellery
835	83.5% silver	harder than 925	annealing range similar to 925	older continental European pieces
800	80% silver	hardest of the common alloys	annealing range similar to 925	older continental pieces, hollowware
Hard solder	graded hard	highest flow point of the set	flows at the top of the set	first seam of a ring
Medium solder	graded medium	middle flow point	flows below hard	later seams on a band
Easy solder	graded easy	lowest flow point	flows below medium	last seam, never heated again

Fineness and solder grades at the bench