After the initial surface treatment is done, despruing and filing edges to the general obtain shape of the finished product, a series of emery sticks and abrasives will be used prepared the raw silver for polish. This stage of the process is pivotal in achieving the high luster finish. The emery sticks will range from 240grit up to 3000grit in certain circumstances.
Other tools used during this period will be abrasive silicone wheels and sanding disks, which are used for hard to reach areas or specific parts of the ring that need to retain a certain shape.

Soldering edges its way into the production process with only a few of our designs, including the Ouroboros, the Skull Signet and all our pendants and bracelets. A small pin is added to the bottom of the Snakes and Skull, which will pass all the way through the ring to the inner band, then the soldering will take place there. After the surface is prepared with flux, solder will be added and melted with heat onto the post, to secure in place. Acid will clean the piece and then the soldered area will be filed, emery’d and polished.

This part of the process is for highlighting details on the piece, seen through the blackened areas within the engraved sections of a design.
This is performed by heating the piece and then submerging in a solution called Liver Of Sulphur, which is sulphur concentrate. Once this is done, the piece is returned back into a setting solution. The sulphur reacts with the base metal in the Sterling Silver to blacken the surface of the ring. During the polishing process, we'll remove the blackened areas of the silver which will have a high polish and the detailed/engraved areas will remain blackened. 

Stone setting, for every jeweller, will be one of the more technical aspects to production. At CHD, we use three setting techniques; hammerset, bezel set and prong setting.
Hammersetting, is used for our small round faceted stones set flush into the surface of the ring. See the Rectangle Signet or Small Round Signet (hyperlinks for each). A stone seat will be burred in the ring, a small wall forged around the bed and once the stone is in place, the wall will be hammered over the girdle of the stone. Then cleaned up flush with the surface.
The bezel set is the predominant technique used in our designs such as the Cushion Rings, The Naked Oval, The Coin Rings and essentially any piece with a Cabochon stone (stone with a flat bottom and no facets). This process will include preparing the stone bed by burring an angled seat for the stone to slot into and will also provide a ‘weak point’ for the bezel wall to fold at.
The setting will then be cleaned up with a bright cut, which is done by an extremely square graver as it takes off a thin layer of silver to clean up any ripples on the surface from the setting.
Lastly, the prong setting - which is done for our Dual Snake and Dual Skull rings. In which the prongs are set onto the faceted stone like a claw, to hold in place.

The final stage of the production process is the polishing of the piece on a bench motor or with our hand piece, using polishing compounds, cotton mops or felt mops, small goats hair brushes or any tool to apply compound in hard to reach areas. 

After the surface treatment of the emery and abrasives has prepared the ring for polishing, we generally go over the piece with our hand piece, polishing with the goats hair brush in intricate areas, as well as the inner band - once this is complete, we move over to the bench motor polishing machine. Starting with tripoli compound on a stiffly stitch mop. This is a heavy cutting compound, known as a pre-polish and will do a lot of the heavy lifting, when it comes to removing the surfaces scratches. The second stage is using a yellow-diamond compound for the mid polish. This will begin the piece’s nice shine and visually will look near to finish. The final will be using a finishing rouge, in our case we use the dialux green - which will bring about the high luster shine.