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.

Soldering is how metals are attached: joining similar or dissimilar metals using solder and heat. Solder — as a noun — is small pieces of metal alloy that melt and flow at a lower temperature than the metal of the parts being joined. It acts, in the course book's own words, like a glue to hold a piece together.

Three grades, one logic

The metalsmith generally works with Hard, Medium and Easy solder, in gold or silver. The harder the solder, the higher its melting temperature — always below the parent metals' melting point, but higher than the easier grades.

The reason for keeping all three in clearly marked, separate containers is sequencing: use hard solder for the earliest joints, then step down through medium to easy. Each later soldering session then melts only the new solder, never re-opening the joints already made. A complex piece can go through several firings intact precisely because the grades descend. (The family extends beyond the big three: extra-easy for repairs and final joins, very hard for enamelling.)

Flux: nothing flows without it

The word comes from the Latin fluxus, flow — and that is the whole job description. The temperatures that melt solder would instantly oxidise the metal surface, and oxide blocks flow. Flux acts as an oxygen inhibitor so solder enters the joint smoothly. It comes solid, powdered, pasted or liquid; borax powder, mixed into a paste with water, is the jewellery-supply-store classic — long-lasting and cheap. Commercial fluxes blend borax and boric acid with fluorides and potassium salts.

Technique at the torch

• The pieces to be joined must be clean and in perfect contact. Solder can never fill open spaces — a gap is a design flaw, not a soldering problem.
• Flux always. Without it the solder will not melt and flow.
• Heat the whole piece evenly, then bias slightly toward the joint — solder is drawn toward the heat, so the joint area guides the flow.
• The moment solder has flowed evenly, stop the heat. Wait a few seconds, quench in water, and soak in pickle to clean.
• Clean, unused solder always melts before already-melted solder — useful when touching up a joint.

Reticulation: the deliberate overheat

Reticulation adds surface texture to silver or gold by deliberately overheating it, producing a rich, somewhat random texture. Throughout the process the metal sits at the edge of melting — it may actually melt through and form holes, and the course's advice is to incorporate them: they only add to the haphazard effect. It is the one place in metalsmithing where losing control is the technique.

Fusing: no solder at all

Fusing takes gold or silver pieces to the approach of their melting point, so the outer surface liquefies and the pieces join directly — no solder, a very organic, rough feel, and, in the course book's phrasing, great fun with scrap off-cuts. The rule from soldering carries over unchanged: the pieces must be clean.

Grounded in the JDMIS Metalsmithing (MS100) course materials. Learn the torch hands-on in Foundation Metalwork Skills and Experience and Intermediate Techniques and Stone Setting. Related reading: Annealing and Pickling Silver and Precious Metals and Hallmarks.

Try it hands-on: Silver Clay Jewellery Workshop in Singapore · Silver Jewellery Experience at Takashimaya

The jeweller's saw frame and its blade are the most essential tools for cutting metal — and because the saw is used so constantly, it pays to invest in the best quality frame and blades available. Inferior blades only lead to frustration: they break easily. The idea of putting a blade in a frame under tension is old enough to have originated in ancient Rome.

Here is what actually matters at the bench: choosing the blade, stringing the frame correctly, cutting with the grain of the tool rather than against it, and knowing why blades snap.

Reading blade sizes

Saw blades cut precious, nonferrous and ferrous metals, and softer materials too — wood, shell, bone, plastics. They come numbered by size, where 8/0 is the finest and 14 the coarsest. Thin metals want fine blades; heavier metals want heavier blades. Most metalsmithing sits in the 3/0 to 1/0 range. Blades are sold by the dozen or the gross (twelve dozen), and they rust in humidity and heat — store them somewhere dry and airtight.

Stringing the frame

Inserting a blade is called stringing, and the sequence matters:

1. Loosen the upper and lower thumbscrews to open their jaws.
2. Insert the blade's upper end fully into the upper clamp, teeth pointing down towards the handle and outward, away from the back of the frame. Get this wrong and the saw cuts on the upstroke — badly.
3. Loosen the back-frame thumbscrew and slide the frame so the blade's lower end just enters the lower jaws, then retighten the back screw.
4. Hold the handle toward you, press the top of the frame against the bench edge and the handle against your chest — it feels awkward at first — and use that compression to seat the lower end into the lower jaws.
5. While holding the pressure, tighten the lower thumbscrew. Release, and the frame's spring keeps the blade under tension.

Sawing: the working rules

• Always saw on the bench pin, with the metal held tight.
• Keep the blade perpendicular to the metal.
• Catch filings in the filing tray as they fall, and keep filings from different metals separate — they are saved and reclaimed.
• Teeth face down, so metal is removed only on the downward stroke.
• To start a cut (the kerf), place the blade against the metal's edge and draw it upward lightly a few times in the same spot — this groove stops the blade wandering when the real, downward strokes begin.

Blade breakage drops dramatically with a lubricant — plain beeswax run along the blade does the job.

Why blades break

The classic causes, in rough order of frequency: metal not held tightly on the bench pin; too much pressure, forward or downward; sharp changes of sawing direction; a blade clamped too loosely or too tightly; excessive speed; and blade freeze. Every one of them is a habit, not a mystery — which is why sawing is the first skill a metalsmith drills.

Piercing: interior patterns with no edge opening

Piercing is drilling and sawing combined into one technique. Drill a round hole inside the design area — hand drill or motorised — then thread the loose blade through that hole before stringing it onto the frame. Once strung, you can saw out patterns wholly inside the sheet, with no opening along the edge. Combined thoughtfully, drilling and piercing produce any patterned pierced work or fretwork a designer can draw — the kind of layered, openwork silver that makes people ask how it was cut.

Grounded in the JDMIS Metalsmithing (MS100) course materials. Learn these skills hands-on in Foundation Metalwork Skills and Experience; for where sawing fits in the whole construction process, see How Jewellery Is Made and Jewellery Findings Explained.

An accomplished painter would never demand less than a beautiful frame for a magnum opus — and the same is true of a metalsmith and their jewellery. No matter how competent you are in every other aspect of the craft, a good finish is an absolute necessity to present a piece in its entirety. More than any other factor, the finish is the initial tip-off as to whether a piece has been well made.

Even the deliberately 'raw' look popular among contemporary jewellers is no excuse: it still requires an immaculate preliminary finish, because the surface must be prepared before the treatments and effects that create the desired outcome can be applied properly.

Sanding: the grit ladder

After hammering, soldering and everything else, a piece bears evidence of its formation — bumps, dents, scars, unsightly blobs. Files handle edges well, but for smoothness and consistency across wider surfaces the complementary process is sanding: wearing down inconsistencies with sandpaper until the surface is even.

The coarseness of sandpaper is its grit — lower numbers coarser, higher numbers finer. The correct method is a ladder: start with the coarsest grit necessary to remove the deepest imperfections, then move through increasingly finer grits, each one removing the impressions left by the previous. Skipping steps is visible; the scratches of a coarse grit always show through a too-fine finish.

Tools that keep sanding flat

• DIY sanding sticks — wrap and adhere sandpaper around small handheld planks and use them like files. Tightly-wrapped paper on a flat surface delivers a far more even cleanup on flat surfaces than fingers ever can, and it removes the uneven pressure your fingertips introduce.
• Split mandrels — tear sandpaper to size, insert one end into the split of the mandrel, wrap the rest, and mount it in the flex shaft. This combines sandpaper's flexibility with motorised speed. Stop periodically to inspect: over-sanding on a mandrel is easy, and it costs detail or structural thickness.

And the caution that belongs in capitals: never allow sandpaper to come into contact with a gemstone.

Polishing: the final touch

Polishing communicates a piece's beauty and desirability — eyes are drawn naturally to the sparkle of an immaculate, mirror-shine piece. Before modern machinery all polishing was done by hand; machines now take the majority, but remnants of the work still need a human touch.

Hand-polishing is rubbing a suitable textile — often leather, cotton or microfiber — coated with a polishing compound or abrasive paste over the piece until the desired effect appears. For hard-to-reach areas and inside corners there is thrumming: a mass of loose fibres, or string, charged with polishing compound, worked into interiors no finger could reach.

Buffing brings in felt discs coated with compound, attached to the flex shaft or polishing motor — speed and consistency for outside surfaces, always after the sanding ladder is truly finished. The finish is the last thing done and the first thing seen.

Grounded in the JDMIS Metalsmithing (MS100) course materials. Practise the full finishing sequence in Foundation Metalwork Skills and Experience; for the step just before it, see How to Bezel-Set a Cabochon — stones are set only after the piece is completely finished.