Nine stages take silver from ore to a packed box. Mining. Refining. Alloying. Design. Wax. Casting. Assembly. Finishing. Plating and inspection. Each one has a specification, and each one has a characteristic way of going wrong.
1. Mining
Silver ore is extracted from open pit quarries or underground tunnels.
Very little of it is mined for its own sake. Silver is too scarce in most deposits to justify a dedicated operation, so the majority of world supply comes up as a byproduct of copper, lead and zinc extraction. Supply therefore tracks industrial base metal demand rather than jewelry demand.
2. Refining
Ore is crushed and floated. Water, air and chemical agents are agitated with the crushed rock. Metal-bearing sulphide particles attach to bubbles and rise. Waste rock sinks. The concentrate is skimmed.
That concentrate is smelted to burn off impurities. The output is a dore bar, a rough ingot holding both silver and gold. Refiners separate the two and strip residual copper. The result is fine silver at 99.9%.
3. Alloying
Fine silver at 99.9% is too soft for jewelry. It deforms under normal handling and will not hold a stone in a prong setting.
Silver is melted and copper is added into the molten metal. The ratio is 92.5% silver to 7.5% copper. That is sterling silver, and it is what the 925 stamp certifies.
| Fine silver | Sterling silver (925) | |
|---|---|---|
| Silver content | 99.9% | 92.5% |
| Melting point | 961.8 C / 1763.2 F | approx. 893 C / 1640 F |
| Hardness | Very soft | Holds a shape under daily wear |
| Tarnish behavior | Resists tarnish well | Tarnishes faster, because of the copper |
| Use in jewelry | Rare, simple pieces only | Standard for almost everything |
Two figures in that table run against expectation. Sterling melts lower than pure silver, not higher, which is why copper goes into molten silver rather than being melted separately first. And the copper that adds hardness also adds tarnish. Copper reacts with airborne Sulphur. Silver on its own barely does. Durability and tarnish resistance move in opposite directions here. sterling silver versus pure silver covers that trade-off, and the different grades of silver used in jewelry covers the grades between the two.
4. Design and CAD
A piece starts as a drawing and becomes a precise 3D model in CAD software.
Manufacturability is decided at this stage. A wall too thin to survive polishing, a setting that cannot be cast, a joint that will always show a seam: all of these are visible in the model and invisible in a sketch. Factories that design and produce under one roof catch them here. Factories producing to a supplied file find out at casting, and by then the batch is paid for.
5. Wax
The CAD model is cut into wax at 1:1 scale, on a milling machine or a wax printer, then finished by hand.
Machine work cuts the geometry. Hand work decides how an edge reads. Both are required.
6. Molding and casting
The wax model is embedded in investment plaster inside a flask. The flask is heated. The wax burns out completely, leaving a cavity in the exact shape of the piece. This is lost-wax casting and it produces the overwhelming majority of silver jewelry.
Molten sterling is poured or vacuum-drawn into the cavity and left to solidify. The plaster is broken away. Raw castings are cut from their sprues.
At volume the waxes are assembled into a tree, dozens branching off one sprue, so a single pour yields a full batch. A rubber mold taken from a master casting allows the design to be reproduced without recurving wax.
Most visible quality faults originate here. Porosity from gas trapped in the metal. Incomplete fill on thin sections. Rough surfaces from a mold that was not fully burnt out.
7. Assembly and soldering
Castings are cleaned. Sprue marks are removed, rough edges filed back, every piece checked for flaws.
Clasps, bails and pendant fittings are soldered on using a silver alloy with a lower melting point than the piece itself, so the joint forms without the body slumping.
Solder composition matters commercially. Some solders and findings contain nickel. A piece that is genuinely 925 in the body can still fail a nickel release test at the clasp. Anyone selling into markets with nickel limits should ask about solder and findings separately from the body of the piece.
8. Polishing and stone setting
Pieces are buffed on rotary machines through successive grades from coarse to fine, ending with a soft polish. This produces the lustre silver is known for and removes surface defects left by earlier stages.
Stones are seated and prongs closed one at a time. A final light polish follows.
Setting is the most skill-dependent operation in the sequence. It is also the easiest place to see the difference between two factories. A correctly set stone sits level, holds firm, and has prongs of even length that do not snag.
9. Plating, coating and inspection
Many pieces receive a surface treatment after setting. Rhodium plating deposits a hard, bright, tarnish-resistant layer between the sterling and the air, which is why rhodium plated silver jewelry stays bright without customer effort. E-coating applies an ultra-thin transparent polymer layer that slows tarnishing without altering color.
Inspection follows. Hallmark presence and legibility. Plating coverage. Stone security. Solder joint integrity. Finish consistency across the batch.
Batch consistency is the real measure. Producing one good ring is not difficult. Producing four thousand identical ones is where cheap production fails, and it is the stage cheap production skips.
Pieces are then weighed, counted, tagged and packed. our Thailand factory runs all nine stages in-house across a 13-step production process at more than 2 million pieces a month. our responsible manufacturing commitments cover the sourcing and labor standards behind it.
Questions that identify a real manufacturer
Five questions. Only a factory can answer all five.
- Do you cast in-house or buy in castings? A trading company buying castings controls none of stage 6 and cannot answer the next three questions.
- What is the plating specification in microns? A number, not an adjective.
- Is there nickel in your solder or findings? The body being 925 does not settle this.
- What does your quality control check, and at what sample rate? Checking every piece and checking one in fifty are both described as QC.
- Can you demonstrate consistency across a repeat order? Order the same line twice and compare. Drift between batches means the supply is drifting behind it.
Full vetting sequence: how to find wholesale jewelry suppliers. For having your own designs produced rather than buying an existing range: how to get your own jewelry designs manufactured.
Frequently asked questions
How is silver jewelry made?
Through nine stages. Silver is mined, refined from ore into fine silver, alloyed with copper into 925 sterling, designed in CAD, carved in wax, cast by the lost-wax method, assembled and soldered, polished and stone-set, then plated and inspected before packing. Lost-wax casting produces most silver jewelry: a wax model is burnt out of a plaster mold and molten sterling fills the cavity left behind.
Where does the silver in jewelry come from?
Mostly from mines that are not looking for silver. It is too scarce in most deposits to justify a dedicated operation, so the majority of world supply is recovered as a byproduct of copper, lead and zinc mining. The ore is crushed, floated to separate metal-bearing sulphides from waste rock, and smelted into a dore bar containing both silver and gold, which refiners then separate.
What is 925 silver made of?
92.5% pure silver and 7.5% other metal, almost always copper, added into molten silver during alloying. The copper makes the metal hard enough to hold a shape, retain a stone in a setting and survive daily wear. Fine silver at 99.9% does none of those reliably.
What is lost-wax casting?
A wax model is embedded in investment plaster, the flask is heated until the wax burns away completely, and molten metal is poured or vacuum-drawn into the cavity that remains. Once cooled the plaster is broken away and the casting is cut from its sprue. It is the standard method for producing detailed silver jewelry at volume.
Where the price difference sits
Two apparently identical 925 pieces at different prices usually differ at three stages: how the piece was cast, how carefully the stone was set, and whether the batch was inspected before it shipped.
ELF925 has manufactured sterling silver in Thailand since 2001. Design, casting, setting, plating, inspection and packing run under one roof. Catalogue: ELF925 wholesale jewelry collection. Minimum order 99 USD.
