Wedding rings

The engagement rings were plain silver bands, to which gold wire was added for the wedding. This was difficult because the gold wire was made up from several pieces of redundant gold chain, and had therefore been soldered before being fused onto the silver; to prevent the risk of the gold falling apart during this process I had to use high melting-point iron wire to bind the gold rings and crosspieces to the silver ring. Jeweller's solder comes in 'easy', 'medium' and 'hard' grades, with the 'hard' having the highest melting point, so if a piece needs to be soldered several times you use 'hard' first, to reduce the risk of melting the solder on the previous joint when performing the next one