One ring to rule them all
FINE-JEWELLERY workshops are, by and large, extraordinarily quiet places. You may catch the faintest hiss of gold being cast, the muffled rasp of delicate filing or the muted tap, tap, tap of a tiny hammer at work, but, otherwise, you could be in a library or even a church. There is one exception to this: when a jeweller is engaged in die-stamping a signet ring.
Witnessing a signet ring being die-stamped is like standing next to a cannon being fired. The process involves taking a bar of solid gold, compressing it so that it is even denser and then stamping out the ring in flat profile. It is this last stage that makes the serious noise, for it requires a steel die to be dropped down onto the gold with
