Fixing My Silver Star Ring

As I was casually taking some photos for this blog post I broke my favourite ring/future family heirloom. It's the one I made during my week in London at the start of my international jewellery design career... There was an incident last year when I caught the star on something and bent the ring into a weird oval shape and a crack appeared on the back. I still wore it though but I had to be very careful when taking it off. 



Nasty Break

Only this time I wasn't careful. I yanked it and felt it go. I could of cried! Don't panic! I'm (attempting to be) a silversmith! Only I've never had to repair anything, let alone someones one of a kind, irreplaceable, favourite ring... Pressure was officially on.

Break Part 2 and the Odd Shape

Now I wasn't saying thankfully yesterday when I had to rush to the Post Office to collect the parcel, but thankfully my new treats from Cooksons had arrived. I'd ordered myself a mandrel and rawhide mallet and some other silver goodies. I reshaped the ring, feeling much more confident now I knew it wouldn't be able to crack and filed the ends of the break smooth so I could solder. All the soldering equipment came out and fingers were crossed that nothing would melt, I was a bit wary that because it had started life as metal clay it would need some sort of special treatment, but at the end of the day it has turned into silver, so should act like the normal silver we use in class. Luckily it did! And it soldered first time! Good times in silver world. 

Then I just had to give it a bit more reshaping, I flattened the star down so it shouldn't catch on anything else, and then sanded the join. My only issue is that you can see the join on the outside, I can't sand it because of the textured band, but then the textured band makes it less obvious so it's not really an issue, I'm just being picky! After a good polish I have my ring back, looking beautiful again.

No Break! But still needs sanding :)