How Is Sterling Silver Jewelry Made? Inside the Handmade Process

How Is Sterling Silver Jewelry Actually Made?

If you've ever looked at a piece of handmade sterling silver jewelry and wondered how the hell it went from a flat piece of metal to that — you're not alone. 😂

And no, I don't order a bunch of premade pieces, stick stones in them and call it handmade.

Most of my jewelry starts as exactly what you'd expect: a flat sheet of metal, wire, stones and an idea in my head.

From there, it gets sawed, filed, formed, soldered, sanded, oxidized, polished, stone set — and occasionally stared at aggressively when something isn't cooperating. 😂

I've been silversmithing for over a decade, and one of my favorite things about this craft is how much actual handwork goes into creating a single piece of jewelry.

So if you've ever wondered what “handmade sterling silver jewelry” actually means, I'm going to show you.

It Usually Starts With a Flat Sheet of Metal

A lot of people are surprised to learn just how boring the beginning of a piece of jewelry can look. 😂

I work primarily with sterling silver sheet and wire, along with stones and other metals like jeweler's brass depending on the piece I'm making.

Before anything looks remotely like jewelry, I'm measuring, drawing, planning layers and figuring out how everything is going to fit together.

For more detailed pieces, I'll transfer my design onto the metal before I ever pick up my saw.

Then the fun starts.

Every Shape Is Sawed by Hand

One of the biggest parts of my work is pierce-and-saw fabrication.

I use a jeweler's saw with an extremely tiny blade to cut shapes directly from sheet metal. If a design has an opening inside of it, I drill a tiny hole, thread the saw blade through that hole, reconnect the blade to the saw frame and cut the interior design by hand.

And yes, the blades break.

A lot. 😂

Some pieces require multiple layers and dozens of individual cuts before they ever get assembled.

This is also why two handmade pieces may have tiny differences even when I'm creating the same design. I'm not pressing a button on a machine that spits out 500 identical necklaces. My hands are physically guiding that saw blade through the metal.

Then Comes Filing, Forming and Soldering

Freshly sawed metal isn't ready to become jewelry.

The edges need to be filed and refined, different components may need to be shaped or formed, and eventually all those separate little pieces need to become one piece.

That's where soldering comes in.

Jewelry soldering isn't the same thing as gluing two pieces together. I'm using a torch to carefully heat the metal so solder flows between the components and creates a permanent bond.

And when you're working on a complicated piece with multiple solder joints, things get interesting really fast. 😂

Every new soldering operation means reheating work you've already completed without destroying the previous joints, melting something you weren't supposed to melt or accidentally moving a component you've spent the last twenty minutes positioning perfectly.

It's equal parts skill, heat control and occasionally yelling at an inanimate object.

The Stone Setting Is Built for the Stone

When I'm using gemstones, I generally build the setting around the individual stone.

For many of my pieces, that means creating a bezel setting — a thin strip of metal formed precisely around the stone, soldered onto the piece and later carefully pushed over the stone's edge to hold it securely in place.

Because natural stones aren't always perfectly identical, the setting has to fit the actual stone I'm using.

This is one of the things I love about handmade jewelry. Instead of designing around what a machine can mass produce, I can build the piece around a stone that has its own shape, color and personality.

Then It Gets Sanded. And Sanded. And Sanded Some More.

This is the glamorous part nobody shows you on Instagram. 😂

Finishing a piece takes time.

There are file marks to remove, solder seams to clean up, scratches to work through and surfaces to refine. I move through different abrasives until I get the finish I want.

Depending on the piece, I may leave areas with a soft satin finish rather than polishing everything to a mirror shine. That's a huge part of the look of my work.

The goal isn't to make it look like it rolled off a factory line.

I still want the metal to feel like metal.

Oxidation Brings the Details to Life

If you've seen my jewelry, you've probably noticed that I use a LOT of blackened silver.

That's oxidation.

After fabrication and finishing, I can intentionally darken the sterling silver. The oxidation settles into recessed areas and details, creating that deep black and silver contrast that's become a huge part of Aesthetic Arrest.

Then I selectively finish the higher areas of the piece so the brighter silver comes back through while those deeper areas stay dark.

It's one of my favorite stages because suddenly all the tiny details I've spent hours creating start jumping out of the metal.

Finally, the Stone Is Set and the Piece Is Finished

Once all of the torch work and most of the finishing are complete, I can finally set the stone.

The bezel is carefully worked over the edge of the stone until it's secure, everything gets its final cleanup and polish, and after what may have started as nothing more than sheet metal, wire and a loose gemstone...

It's jewelry.

And THAT is what I mean when I say my jewelry is handmade. 😂

Why Handmade Jewelry Is Different

There's absolutely nothing wrong with jewelry produced using modern manufacturing methods. But traditional handmade silversmithing is a completely different process.

When you buy one of my pieces, somebody actually stood at a bench and made the damn thing.

I sawed the metal. I filed it. I soldered it. I formed it. I sanded it. I created the stone setting. I oxidized it. I finished it. And I set the stone.

That's also why handmade jewelry can cost more than something that looks vaguely similar from a mass-market retailer. You're not only paying for silver and a stone. You're paying for the materials, tools, years spent learning the craft and the hours of hands-on work that went into making that individual piece.

And honestly, that's exactly why I still love silversmithing after all these years.

I get to take a completely ordinary piece of metal and turn it into something that didn't exist before.

Shop Handmade Jewelry by Aesthetic Arrest

If you stumbled onto this page because you were curious about how sterling silver jewelry is made — hi. 😂 I'm Dani, the silversmith behind Aesthetic Arrest.

My work tends to live somewhere between nature and the beautifully strange — lots of blackened silver, gemstones, botanical elements, moons, gothic details and whatever else happens to crawl out of my brain and onto my bench.

Every piece is fabricated by hand using the same traditional silversmithing techniques you just read about.

If you'd like to see what I've been making lately, you can shop my currently available handmade jewelry here.