You might wonder why you can never get your old jewellery to shine like new, or you might wonder why the $15 silver item in a market has nothing like the finish that you see on a $120 item in a jewellery shop.

Well let me take you quickly through the process that I do to finish of my pieces of jewellery.

Firstly, an item comes back from the casting process and it has some pieces of metal hanging off it and the finish is all crinkly or it looks like it has been sandblasted. Here are the steps I take:

1. I use a heavy file and remove all the dags or sharp bits of metal left over from casting.
2. I next use a light metal file and I file the item as smooth as I can. I also use round files and square files and triangular files to get into those hard to get places.
3. Next I use various grades of sandpaper starting with a medium grit and sanding all over the items. Then I use a finer grade to sand all over again.
4. Now I place the items in a tumbler of metal shot. It is a mixture of small ball bearings and pointy pieces of stainless steel. It is tumbled in this with a solution of water and polish. I leave it tumbling for several hours.
5. I now use string with polish on it to get into holes and crevices where my other tools cannot reach. I run the string through the holes and polish the inside of them. This takes a lot of time and I am not fond of doing it.
6. I now use a mechanical polisher with a grease called Tripoli which actually comes from Tripoli and I use this to polish the item.
7. Now I put this into an ultrasonic machine with a solution of hot water and detergent to clean the Tripoli polish from the item.
8. Now I use another polish on the machine called Rouge. It is a red polish and now this will give my item a high gleam.
9. Back into the ultrasonic for about twenty minutes and the rouge is removed. I then dry the item carefully with a soft cloth.
10. Finally I get a polish impregnated cloth and I hand polish the item for a magnificent sparkling finish.

Thats all there is to it! I now slip the item into a jewellery box without touching it with my fingers. Sometimes Ill wear a glove for this as I do not want my finger marks on the item.

Now if you have been wearing your wedding ring 24/7 for ten years and you take it off and try to polish it by hand youll know why youll never catch up to me.