A Week in the Workshop During Wedding Season

Wedding season is always the busiest time of year in the workshop. The pace changes completely around April and carries through most of summer, with benches full, polishing dust everywhere and the sound of the lathe running most days of the week.

The workshop itself is not glamorous. It is usually dusty, covered in fine polishing powder and either absolutely freezing in winter or unbearably warm in summer, with maybe two weeks of genuinely comfortable weather somewhere in between. There is almost always a coffee or an energy drink sitting nearby, and by the end of the week G is usually covered in polishing dust no matter how many times he washes his hands. At this point, hand washing has become something of an Olympic sport.

Monday usually starts with organising the week ahead.

Once new orders come through, G sorts everything by metal before starting the first stage of production. We work with several different materials including Titanium, Black Zirconium, Stainless Steel, Superconductor and multiple types of Damascus Steel, so grouping rings together by metal makes the workflow far more manageable.

The first real job is slicing the rings from solid bars of metal to the widths requested by each customer. By the end of Monday there are usually rows of metal slices lined across the workbench ready for shaping later in the week.

Tuesday is often where the workshop starts getting properly busy.

Any remaining slicing gets finished before work begins on inlays and more detailed processes. Rings with natural inlays or precious metal inlays are started around this point, along with Falls rings using gold or platinum.

This particular week included two Falls rings, one yellow gold and one rose gold. The rose gold one ended up being my favourite. G and I both wear Falls rings ourselves as our wedding bands, so those designs have always felt especially personal to us.

Natural inlays are also usually laid or started on Tuesdays. Some materials behave perfectly first time while others take far more patience than expected. No two pieces of natural material ever quite behave the same way, which is part of why we enjoy working with them so much.

By Wednesday the focus shifts heavily onto shaping and finishing.

This is probably the most labour-intensive stage of the week and the point where every ring really begins to feel individual. The outside profile is refined, comfort-fit interiors are shaped and the finishing process begins properly.

Every polished ring is worked gradually through multiple sanding stages, starting around 400 grit and progressing all the way through to 2500 grit before final polishing. Satin finishes actually begin as polished rings too. Once the polished base is complete, the final matte finish is created using a very light brushing process to soften the surface while keeping the finish clean and even.

This is also the stage where perfectionism tends to kick in hardest.

If something is not right, it gets remade.

Thankfully it does not happen very often anymore, but occasionally mistakes happen during production. Usually it is something simple like the wrong width or an incorrect size being picked up rather than an issue with the finish itself. Still, if G is not happy with a ring, it does not leave the workshop.

Thursday is usually dedicated to final finishing and inspection.

Rings are polished inside and out, edges are checked, finishes are refined and everything is carefully inspected before engraving and dispatch. G takes his work extremely seriously and there is a lot of attention paid to durability and finish quality during this stage. These are rings people will hopefully wear for decades, so rushing the final stages has never really been an option.

Friday becomes engraving and posting day.

All engraving is completed in-house as well, another process G taught himself over time through trial, error and plenty of persistence. Some weeks the workshop finally starts feeling calmer by Friday afternoon. Other weeks the pace carries right through the weekend if workloads become particularly heavy.

We try not to let delays happen where possible, but occasionally during peak wedding season things can push back slightly by a few days simply because everything is still genuinely handmade here in the workshop rather than mass-produced elsewhere.

By the end of the week the benches are usually covered in polishing cloths, sanding papers, tiny metal shavings and half-finished coffees, but there is also something satisfying about seeing rows of completed rings ready to head out into the world.

Even during the busiest weeks, that part never really gets old.