Democratic Sentinel, Volume 17, Number 32, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 25 August 1893 — How Gold Rings Are Made. [ARTICLE]

How Gold Rings Are Made.

Gold rings are made from bars nine or fifteen inches long. A bar fifteen inches long, about two inches wide and three-sixteenths of an inch thick, is worth about £2OO. It would make three or four hundred four pennyweight rings. A dozen processes and twenty minutes’ time are required to change the bar into merchantable rings. A pair of shears cuts the bars ihto strips. By the turn of a wheel, one, two, three times, the guillotinelike blade of the shears cuts the bar into slices, one, two, or three sixteenths of an inch wide. A rolling machine presses out the strips and makes them flat or grooved. Each strip is then put under the blowpipe and annealed, The oxide of copper comes to the surface and is put into a pickle of sulphuric acid, the bit of gold is stamped with its quality and the name of the maker, and is put through a machinq,that bends it into the shape of a ring, the same making a ring of any size. The ends are soldered with an alloy of inferior fineness to the quality of the ring. Many people imagine that rings are run in a mold because they can’t see where they are soldered. The ring spins through the turning lathes, is rounded and pared, and polished first with tripoli and then with steel filings and rouge.