Generally speaking, there are two main ways to approach making a piece of jewellery — and understanding both, even if you specialise in one, is what lets a designer make the right call for each piece.
Fabrication: building directly in metal
The first approach, fabrication, works directly in metal prepared beforehand into basic forms — sheet and wire — which are then struck, cut, folded, bent, deformed, hammered, sculpted and joined to create the final piece. It is best for one-off designs, and it carries a quiet structural advantage: working the metal work-hardens it as the piece is made, so a fabricated piece is less easy to deform or damage while being worn.
Lost-wax casting: the model and the mould
The second approach, lost-wax casting, begins by carving a wax model of the design. The model is encased in a clay-like investment that hardens around it; the wax is then melted out — 'lost' — leaving a hollow impression that is filled with molten metal, which hardens into the final form in place of the wax. Casting is ideal for adaptation into mass production, and can even produce faithful copies of a piece that was originally hand-fabricated — the two approaches feeding each other.
Sheet and wire: the vocabulary of fabrication
Hand-fabrication metal comes in two basic forms. Sheet — paper-like sheets of various thicknesses, from which shapes are cut and formed. Wire — elongated extrusions across a wide range of thicknesses: thicker ones approach rods, thinner ones are properly called wire, and cross-sections vary beyond round.
Each has its natural roles at the bench:
- Thicker wire (rods): ring and bangle shanks, hinge inserts.
- Thinner wire: the prongs on gemstone settings, the links of a handmade chain.
Fashion jewellery designers sometimes build complete pieces from wire alone — wire-worked bracelets, wrap pendants — but in metalsmithing, wire exists to complement sheet: to achieve the forms sheet alone cannot.
Gauge: the shared unit of thickness
Both sheet and wire come in standardised thicknesses measured in gauge — the same scale for both. Gauge runs numerically inverse: as the gauge number increases, the metal gets thinner and finer. The thickness of the metal in hand is read directly with a gauge meter, and the number determines what the metal can take: a fine-gauge sheet behaves very differently under a hammer than a heavy one.
Every subsequent bench skill — annealing, sawing, soldering, forming, setting — happens to metal that arrived as sheet or wire at some gauge. Choosing that starting point is the first design decision of fabrication.
Grounded in the JDMIS Metalsmithing (MS100) course materials. See both pathways in practice through the comprehensive jewellery diploma programmes, or start with Foundation Metalwork Skills. Related reading: How Jewellery Is Made and Precious Metals and Hallmarks.