The photos in this post show some of the different stages of a nickel silver ring I recently made for my wife. She likes darker colored white metals like white golds and stainless steel. Nickel silver also has this characteristic darker color. A lot of people have an allergic reaction to nickel against the skin so I don't offer any nickel items for sale unless it's a non-pendant guitar pick (and I only make nickel ones by request). The above photo shows the strip I cut out from a 1.29mm sheet of nickel silver. You can see where the strip was cut out by the reference arrows. As you can see, I label all nickel stock very clearly.
The strips' ends had to be trued and cleaned before soldering. This alloy generally doesn't create as strong of a solder seam as other alloys used in jewelry. After soldering, the ring is sized to just a tad smaller than her actual size. This leaves me room to file and polish (finish) the inside which will leave it the exact size desired.
Here, the outside of the band is filed and made uniform in preparation for the next step.
Though a little difficult to see in the photo... the outside of the band has been given a 'frosted' finish to compliment the highly polished outer bands the ring is about to receive.
The two outside bands are cut and polished. The sides of the ring are also trued and ready to be polished as well.
Here is the finished product. After all other steps are completed, the inside is filed, polished, and ready to be engraved and worn. The ring is shown next to the sheet that it was taken out of.
