This is probably a trade secret, but I’ve heard it said that the best jewelers are just really good at fixing their own mistakes. You might go to do a resize and find out the hard way that there are more solder joints than you could have imagined, and you have to piece everything back together just so. Or I may go to solder one joint and end up melting another part of the ring. I call it zen and the art of retipping.
This past October I got married, and I had the great joy of making our wedding rings.
After experimenting with a few different techniques, I decided to inlay part of the gold I would use for my ring into husband's. We both liked the symbolism of a marriage of metals representing the bond between two people.
Working on our rings wasn't an easy process. Gold is not easily altered without a great deal of pressure and heat. It can require quite a bit of strength in order to make something so hard turn into something beautiful and functional. But perhaps that's how it works. Through the joys and trials our marriage will inevitably bring with it, our hope is that the love will shape us into something more beautiful still.