Posted by Jim Young 2 on 18/03/2020 19:44:47:
Steve
Would you be willing to expand on your methods for the rings and perhaps indicate a source for the ring blanks.
Your results are spectacular and encourage experimentation!.
OK so where do I start.
Originally I was just making coin rings, which has been quite successful, but to make a good job without spending an age beating a coin to death to get the shape, you would need.
A ring stretcher, a set of dies to create the inversion. a decent hole punch. See the one I have recently made, because I was having difficulty punching dead centre. Without that it is a waste of time going any further. A blow lamp & many other items like all grades of wet & dry paper. Ring mandrels ( I have made my own on the lathe ). To make the ones with the inlay, which have turned out great so far. You could either buy the ring blanks, I will put a link at the end for all the things you would need. The ring that is glowing green, I made entirely. A lot cheaper to turn the body yourself & of course you can then experiment on thickness, width & depth + width of the centre groove.
The blue ring is from a bought ring blank. They do lots of shapes & every finger size. Some plain & some with various width grooves. The blue ring is a bought blank. I will not be buying any more blanks because they are easy to make yourself, if you have a lathe.
The method. The wood ring I have already mentioned, but I have recently bought a large amount of exotic wood 0.6mm veneer's To which you cut a strip with a very sharp blade to the width of the groove in the ring. Then leave in hot water for 2 mins to soften. Once soft remove & wrap round anything roughly the size of ring you are making. Secure with some tape & leave overnight to fully dry.
Then carefully remove the tape & rub each end of the veneer on some 600 paper to taper the ends. Super glue the beginning of the wood to the ring & works it round the ring. Dabbing drops of super glue as you go. There are a lot of types of CA or super glue. I have the gel type, the medium viscosity & some that is like water. The water one for the wood veneer. Once at least one turn is done , covering all the groove to satisfaction then glue the end. Once this is fully set you can start to sand the diameter. If it is below the groove then simply drip all around the ring with med or thick super glue.
This is where the lathe is very handy especially if you can run at very slow speeds. If no lathe then a battery drill in the vice or whatever you can sum up. The point is you must keep the ring turning very slowly or the super glue will just end up as a big blob in one place.
Rubbing down while rotating takes an age. Start with 220 if it is bad or a higher if it is reasonably smooth. To give an idea , I start with 220 to 400. Then up to 600, 800. 1200, 2000, finally 2500 with water. Then it is on with the Dremel & polish. I have tried many types of polish but always come back to the Solvol autosol metal polish. Those rings above took around 4 hours each just to rub down & polish. The problem can be that when you rub the CA glue down, there are sometimes little air bubbles. These have to be rectified & then filled with more glue. Takes forever waiting for glue to go off. I have activator but it acts weird. It kind of boils the glue as it sends it off. Tried light dusting & heavy coats to no avail. So I leave for a good few hours once glued. On a few occasions I have not waited long enough & started to work on the ring just to ruin it. Start again.
The opal rings were something I just experimented with. The limit with these is your own imagination & being able to get the supplies required. For example if you do not have sums of money to chuck at them, go back up this page to the green & the blue rings, I mean the 2 above that block of wood. Have a stab at what they cost to make. Literaly nothing. How so. Well the infil is common card glitter, I have tubes of every colour. About £1 a tube if that. A tube would make probably 100 rings. The ring itself is just some aluminium round bar I had. Then a bit of super glue.
On the other hand these just above cost a bit more. The infill is proper crushed opal. A little packet to do 1 or 2 rings if you are lucky is about £6 to £7 a bag. 1gram. The blue ring Has the opal , but also had to buy the blank. Cost total about £13. Anyway I hope this has helped you & any further info just ask. I am still making dies for the pressing of coins with an aim of not damaging any of the print inside & out. Pics of what I have made. About 10 so far have gone. Thought I might have covered the cost by now but I have too many friends , that want stuff for nowt. Haha Never mind. OK so some pics & a link to buying materials for you. Regards. Steve.
Ring supplies