Hand Fabrication

In a truly hand-fabricated item, every element is formed, assembled, joined, and finished entirely by hand or with hand tools. Flex shafts and polishing wheels are considered hand tools because, although they’re powered by electricity, they’re hand-controlled.

Because hand fabrication is time and labor intensive, the pieces can be expensive, but the process has many benefits. For one thing, it offers jewelers a great deal of creative freedom. It can result in complex designs that might be impossible with other methods. It’s often used for creating custom-designed, one-of-a-kind pieces, or to build pieces around gems that would be difficult to set into premade mountings.