I started making rings via a very devious route - I started life as a Telephone Engineer! and during my time with the GPO/BT I did most everything from maintaining the old electromechanical telephone exchanges, to climbing poles, to installing and maintaining the latest Digital Private Exchange equipment. Then BT offered me a largish sum of money to leave (ie redundancy!) which I took and became........ an Antiques dealer (?!) Having lost a considerable amount of my redundancy money learning the many pitfalls of being an Antiques Dealer (ouch!) I found myself more and more interested in Antique and second hand jewellery, especially rings. It seemed a shame that I saw so many items broken or damaged, and the cost to repair them was so high that I decided to have a go myself. Many ruined items and expensive mistakes later :-) I decided to read up on what to do and why and how, and with that plus some training I'd had with BT as an apprentice (believe it or not) I gradually got the hang of it. Since then I've been virtually a full time jeweller in my own little specialised field of mainly making solitaire rings, selling mostly online eg eBay, Amazon, Etsy and so on and I'm a lot happier doing that than when I worked for BT! Unfortunately I was diagnosed as having Multiple Sclerosis (MS) a while back and as it progresses in its unpredictable way it does limit what I can do and when I am able to do it, so I'm a lot slower and produce a lot less than I used to, but while I'm still upright(ish) and breathing I'll keep on going!