I've been wanting to dip my toe into the world of selling my jewellery for a while, but like others have run into a brick wall when it comes to finding an insurance company to cover me for home business use which involves the use of gas/flame (at an affordable price). Even a policy I found specifically for jewellery makers expressly excluded the use of flame (other than for cooking and/or heating) and gas (again, other than of cooking and/or heating). Apparently soldering doesn't count as heating.

A chance conversation about this with a colleague at my jewellery class and he mentioned he had just got a policy with Military Mutual.

http://www.themilitarymutual.com

So I gave them a call and explained what I was looking for how I only had a little torch (well two actually) at the moment but would probably want to upgrade to a bigger torch attached to propane tank at some point in the future. I was put on hold whilst he spoke with one of their under-writers and they came back couple of minutes later saying yes, all fine.

Now I don't have much in the way of equipment, so £100k contents cover for the whole house (their upper limit) is okay for me (although thinking about it maybe I should get my other half to take out a separate contents cover for his expensive suit and shoe collection!). Contents are covered on an all risk basis unlike my old policy where I had to list everything that went outside of the house for which I wanted cover. Anything worth over £5k has to be noted on the policy though, and there's the usual excesses.

Buildings insurance cover is for £1M - pretty standard.

The quote was a bit of a shocker. Contents AND buildings insurance for less than my recent renewal notice for contents only (which offered significantly less cover than £100k).

I know I'll still need to sort out other insurance if I try out craft fair selling, etc., but at least now the only thing holding me back from starting up is me!

Susieq