The Bench Journal

Selling Your Jewellery at UK Craft Fairs
Selling Your Jewellery at UK Craft Fairs: A Maker's First Stall
Fees, insurance, display, stock and the sums nobody posts about — a calm, practical playbook for a maker's first craft-fair stall, from the £5m liability certificate to the follow-up that... Read more...
Wire-Wrapped Settings
Wire-Wrapped Settings: Stone Setting with No Torch at All
Stone setting with no torch: the border-wrap frame for cabochons, a cold-built wire claw for faceted stones, the briolette wrap for drops, and neat coil finishing. Plus wire temper and... Read more...
Reading UK Hallmarks
Reading UK Hallmarks: What Those Tiny Marks Actually Say
Sponsor, fineness, town mark, date letter — a working decode of British hallmarks, the weight thresholds that make 'unhallmarked' legal or suspect, and the loupe habits that catch cast, rubbed... Read more...
Soldering Complex Pieces
Soldering Complex Pieces: Heat Staging, Solder Grades & Not Undoing Your Work
How to solder a piece with many joins and keep every earlier seam intact: grading solder from hard to easy, heating the whole piece rather than the pallion, heat sinks... Read more...
Common Jewellery Repairs at the Bench
Common Jewellery Repairs at the Bench: Where to Start
From sizing and split shanks to re-tipping claws and mending chains: the repairs a starting bench jeweller actually sees, the trap hidden in each one, and when declining a job... Read more...
Tube Hinges & Chenier
Tube Hinges & Chenier: Small Mechanics for Boxes and Lockets
The classic three-knuckle tube hinge, step by step: choosing chenier, cutting knuckles dead square, filing the bearing groove, soldering the 2+1 pattern without freezing the action, and fitting the pin... Read more...
Satin, Matte & Brushed
Satin, Matte & Brushed: Finishes Beyond the Mirror Polish
Not every piece wants a mirror. Here is how satin, brushed, matte and frosted finishes are made — wire wheels, pumice, tumbling media and tape-masked contrast — when each one... Read more...
Piercing & Fretwork
Piercing & Fretwork: Cutting Designs from Sheet
Piercing turns the saw into a drawing instrument. Here is the full order of work — pattern transfer, pilot holes, interior-first cutting, tight corners and edge cleanup — plus the... Read more...
Torch-Fired Enamelling
Torch-Fired Enamelling: Colour on Metal Without a Kiln
Vitreous enamel is ground glass fused onto metal, and a bench torch will fire small copper pieces without any kiln. This guide walks through preparation, sifting, firing from beneath, layering... Read more...
Granulation
Granulation: Fusing Tiny Silver Spheres, the Ancient Way
Granulation decorates metal with tiny spheres fused — not soldered — to the surface, a technique the Etruscans perfected three millennia ago. This guide covers making and sorting fine-silver granules,... Read more...
Cleaning & Caring for Finished Jewellery
Cleaning & Caring for Finished Jewellery: Ultrasonic, Steam & by Hand
Clean a piece wrong and you scratch metal or crack a stone. Here’s how to clean finished jewellery by hand, by ultrasonic and by steam — and the stones that... Read more...
Photographing Your Handmade Jewellery
Photographing Your Handmade Jewellery (Without a Studio)
You don’t need a studio to shoot jewellery well — just a window, a bounce card and a steady phone. Here’s how to get sharp focus, true metal colour and... Read more...
Chain Making by Hand
Chain Making by Hand: Loop-in-Loop & Simple Links
How to make chain at the bench — winding and saw-cutting identical jump rings on a mandrel, closing each join flush, soldering a simple round-link chain, and weaving the ancient... Read more...
Keum-boo gold foil bonded to a silver pendant, with burnishers on cream linen
Keum-Boo: Bonding Gold Leaf to Silver
The Korean art of diffusion-bonding thin 24k gold foil onto silver with heat and a burnisher — no solder and no plating tank. We cover why the technique needs fine... Read more...
Etching Metal for Jewellery
Etching Metal for Jewellery: Resists, Etchants & Safety
A safety-first guide to etching metal for jewellery: transferring a design, sealing it with a resist, choosing between ferric chloride and saline electro-etching, controlling the bite, and neutralising and disposing... Read more...
Set a Cabochon in a Bezel
Set a Cabochon in a Bezel: A Step-by-Step Project
A complete beginner stone-setting project: how to set a round cabochon in a fine-silver bezel on a sheet backplate, from measuring and soldering to filing, sanding and burnishing the collar... Read more...
Reticulation
Reticulation: Creating Molten Silver Textures
Reticulation heats silver until the surface skin ripples into organic, molten-looking ridges. Here is the metallurgy behind it, how to depletion-gild your sheet, how to read the surface at the... Read more...
Fold Forming for Beginners
Fold Forming for Beginners: Big Shapes from Flat Sheet
Fold forming is the quickest route from flat sheet to bold three-dimensional form. Here is how the line fold and T-fold work, the hammers and stakes you need, and the... Read more...
Cuttlefish Bone & Delft Clay Casting at Home
Cuttlefish Bone & Delft Clay Casting at Home
Two low-cost casting methods any home jeweller can manage — cuttlefish bone and Delft clay. How to make the mould, melt and pour silver safely, and clean up the result. Read more...
A Jeweller's Guide to Silver, Brass & Copper
A Jeweller's Guide to Silver, Brass & Copper (and When to Use Each)
The three metals on every jeweller's bench — silver, brass and copper — each behave differently and cost differently to get wrong. Here is what each is good for, and... Read more...
How to Measure Your Ring Size at Home
How to Measure Your Ring Size at Home (UK A–Z & mm)
Get a ring size wrong and the whole piece is wrong. Here are three reliable ways to measure at home — and the traps that catch people out. Read more...
Choosing a Pendant Motor or Flex-Shaft for the Bench
Choosing a Pendant Motor or Flex-Shaft for the Bench
A pendant motor is the single most-used powered tool on a working bench. Here is what to look for and the accessories that make it earn its keep. Read more...
Claw & Prong Setting for Beginners
Claw & Prong Setting for Beginners
Claws lift a stone into the light and hold it with surprisingly little metal. Here is how prong setting works and how to set your first stone cleanly. Read more...
Making Ear Wires & Earring Findings by Hand
Making Ear Wires & Earring Findings by Hand
Shop-bought findings are fine — until you want a perfect match. Here is how to make ear wires and hooks by hand, consistently. Read more...