Behind the Jewelry Scenes: Mold to Polish Part 2 of 3

Today I went to go pick up the castings of my wax carving you saw on my first post here.  Do you remember my little blue wax paisley shape I carved?I am waiting by the casters "receiving" window:As you can see from the ginormous NO CREDIT sign, they liked to be paid immediately.This is what I picked up:These castings are in sterling silver and came from a mold. I carved a large and small paisley for which one will be a necklace and the smaller one earrings.Here is what the molds look like.  The wax is made into a mold then metal is poured in.  That is how I received silver pieces.This is the large size paisley that you saw in my photos from my blog series 1.Next, I go to my production company to have them polished since the silver pieces you saw above is rough silver, unpolished.He has a bowl of water next to him to dip the metal since it gets hot when polishing.  Each piece must be polished by hand, individually.A polisher only does that same job all day.  Each person has a specialty within a production company.This is George.  He does all the soldering which means he puts chains on pendants and adheres metal together.If a jewelry designer were to do all the steps above, one piece would take a very long time and cost quite a lot.  By having specialists, it saves time.  In addition, I love to keep labor opportunities in the US, namely New York City.