The jewellery manufacturing process, step by step

Whether you are making one bespoke ring or a run of two hundred, the sequence is broadly the same. What changes is how many pieces move through each stage and who does the work. Knowing the whole chain makes it much easier to see where a delay is coming from.

1. Brief and concept

The client's requirement becomes a specification: piece type, metal, stones, budget, deadline. Sketches or reference images at this stage save days later. A brief that says slim vintage-style solitaire is not yet a brief; one that names a stone size, a shank width and a setting type is.

2. CAD modelling

The design is built as a closed 3D solid, with stone seats, wall thicknesses and prong dimensions resolved. Renders are produced for client approval.

This is the cheapest stage to change anything, and the last stage where change is genuinely cheap.

3. Approval

The client signs off the render. It is worth being explicit that a render is a picture, not a sample — colour, scale on a hand, and finish all read differently in metal. Setting expectations here prevents an expensive disagreement later.

4. Pattern production

The approved file is printed in castable resin or wax, or cut as a master and moulded in rubber for repeat production. One-offs are usually printed directly; production runs are usually moulded.

5. Casting

Patterns are sprued onto a tree, invested in a flask, burned out in a kiln, and filled with molten metal. The tree is quenched, the investment broken away, and the castings cut from the sprues.

6. Filing and pre-polish

Sprue stubs are removed and the casting is cleaned up. Metal is lost here as dust, which is why the finished weight is always below the cast weight.

7. Stone setting

Seats are cut or opened and stones are set. On pavé and channel work this is the most skilled and most time-consuming stage in the entire chain, and it is the one most often underestimated when a deadline is quoted.

8. Final finishing

Polishing, and any plating — rhodium on white gold is the common case. Some pieces take a brushed, matte or hammered finish instead, which is applied here rather than modelled.

9. Hallmarking and quality control

Where required, the piece goes to an assay office. It is then checked: stones secure, size correct, finish even, weight recorded.

Where the timeline actually slips

In practice, delays cluster in a few predictable places.

• Approval. Waiting on a client to respond to renders is the single most common cause of a missed deadline, and the one furthest outside your control.
• Stone supply. A calibrated stone that has to be sourced can outlast the entire making process.
• Setting. Consistently underestimated on multi-stone work.
• Recasting. A casting failure sends the piece back several stages, and it is almost always traceable to something decided in the model.
• Hallmarking. An assay office queue is a fixed cost in days that no amount of urgency shortens.

Which stages you can outsource

Very few businesses run the whole chain in house, and there is no reason to. Casting bureaus, setters and platers all sell their stage as a service. CAD is the same — it is a specialist stage that can sit outside your business without any loss of control, provided you get files you own and can take elsewhere.

We handle the modelling stage and hand over print-ready files, so the rest of your chain carries on exactly as it does now. Quotations are free, and there is no obligation.