Thread: Ring making

If the material is soft enough, or can be hardened later, a lathe is quite often used to rough it out before putting a polished finish on. Think they're quite often plated with a tough/corrosion resistant coating, too. (Similar to the coatings used in pen kits, I believe.)

I've ground a few at work on the cylindrical out of carbide 'whoopses'.

They sell pretty well if they look good, too.

cool....
what about where to get certain metal? I can get steel sheet metal but thats about all i've seen....also, any special tools or techniques or anything like that?

There's heaps out there. All different sorts of metals. (Rarely sheet metal though. That's typically referred to as butcher's steel.)

Most of the time, rings made by the pro's follow three or four stages, that I know of.

-Casting to rough shape and size. (Cheap nasty ones are left at this stage.)

-Turning true and near size on a lathe, if the material is soft enough.

-Cylindrical grinding to final size. (Usually used instead of the lathe on hard materials.)

-Polishing to a nice finish.

And that'd be for a simple ring. If it had engravings, or stones set into it, there's even more detail to get into before polishing.

As far as I know, Titanium and Carbide rings are quickly becoming quite popular. They can be finished really nicely and are quite resilient to scratching.

Catch 22 is that carbide can only be ground with diamond wheels and it can't be turned on a lathe. (It's actually the same material that most cutting inserts on a lathe are made from.)

Hi Eindringling

My dad was a watchmaker/ jeweler.I can't remember that he made any rings, but repaired and had to resize many of them.

Rings are formed from corrosion resistant precious malleable metals.I do know there was a set of rolls that formed them.

I don't have a lot to tell you as I was never interested at all in jewelry other than to tell you that the tools required are not cheap and as small child got into big strife if I touched them.

I think you need to talk to a jeweler personally to get more info. I do not know if there are any here. A bit of work by yourself on Google should find more info. To show you how easy that is, here's a link I found.

http://www2b.abc.net.au/science/k2/s...ic1278103.shtm

Cheers
Graham