How Your Ring Is Made
To celebrate the launch of our gold rings, we’ve got a bonus blog post this week to tell you all about how our sterling silver rings are made! We put as much love into your ring as you put into your pup. Here's a closer look at our process, where we make your ring as precious and special as your four-legged best friend!
Beginning Each Creation- What is Lost Wax Casting?
Our rings are created using a method called “Lost wax casting”. The reason a wax model is used instead of a single mold is to ensure that every tiny detail is kept precise and perfect, and it prevents bubbles from forming when the silver is poured.
The wax ring is made by injecting melted wax into a reusable mold, where it solidifies and can be removed and checked for quality. The wax copy is actually slightly larger than the ring will be, since the silver will shrink a bit as it cools. Multiple wax rings are all individually attached to a wax rod so we can cast more than one at a time. The wax rod also serves the purpose of creating a channel for the silver to flow through, and a hole where air can escape to prevent bubbles from forming in the silver. The wax is then surrounded by a plaster mixture, which then dries, preserving every tiny detail.
Our 925 sterling silver is 92.5% silver combined with an alloy of 7.5% other metals, which is done for 3 reasons- to make the silver stronger, to make it more resistant to tarnishing, and to give it a nicer finish. The sterling silver is melted and poured into the mold, where the wax melts away and is replaced by the silver. The silver rings are then pulled out of the heat-resistant mixture, and then your ring is ready to go to the next step.
Beautifying Your Ring- Grinding, Polishing, and Electro Plating
Your ring is then removed from the big silver cast to be individually cared for during the rest of the process. The bumps where it was attached to the rod is ground away to be flush with the rest of the ring, which is then polished to prepare for the next step.
Electro Plating- What is it, and why do it? Electroplating adds one more super fine coating of silver to the surface of the ring to help make it stay beautiful longer such as by resisting rust. Your ring is submerged our special solution where the extra silver attaches to the surface of the ring and we can move on to the next step.
Making it Precious- Adding Stones and Your Pup's Name!
Next, the stones are individually added to each setting in your ring. Each precious stone has its own base in the ring where it is placed, and four prongs surrounding every stone is carefully bent over by our skilled artisan for a precise fit, squeezing and securing it into place.
Now your ring is ready to be engraved and inked! Your ring is individually mounted into our laser engraving machine, where we put your pup’s name into a computer that operates the laser for a precise and beautiful engraving. After the machine finishes the deep engraving, a special ink is smeared onto the surface, and quickly wiped away so that the only ink remaining fills the letters that were just engraved, making your wonderful pup's name easy to read.
Time to Send it To You!
Finally, one more quality check is performed on your ring to ensure everything is perfect! Then it is packaged and prepared to be sent straight to you. You wait excitedly for your precious ring, and when it arrives you open it up and put it on right away, so you can show off how much you love your pup!