Wedding Ring 2011 01 10

For a few years now, I’ve been thinking about the idea of jewellery that was made from industrial materials instead of precious metals and flawless, cut gemstones. I wondered what it would be like to see a rough, industrial diamond set in an iron or steel ring. From a cost perspective, you could have a diamond many times larger than what the average person would be able to afford if it were a jewellery grade stone. With our upcoming wedding in June, I offered to make a ring for my fiancee but she didn’t fancy the idea of a rusty, jagged piece of industrial metalwork so I settled for making one for myself.

After doing some research on different metals, I decided to go with a ring made from 316L stainless steel and C145 tellurium copper. This steel alloy is commonly used in jewellery due to its corrosion resistance and I chose C145 copper because of its machinability.

The design will be a simple steel band with seven copper inserts evenly spaced around the circumference.

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Centering stock on rotary table with dial indicator
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My mini lathe is too feeble to drill a big enough hole for the boring bar...
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...So I made several plunges with an endmill while rotating the table in between plunges
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Rotary table mounted on its side
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Seven 0.125" holes were drilled around the circumference
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Next to it is an aluminum test ring I made to get the right size for my finger
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Turning the tip of the copper plugs to a sliding fit
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...but the rest is 0.001" bigger for a "hammer" fit
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Test fitting one of the plugs
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Plugs are then hammered in place
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Five plugs in place
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Seven plugs in place
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A carbide Dremel bit is used to remove the excess copper
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...From the inside...
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...And the outside
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The rest of the copper can now be removed with the lathe
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After cleaning up, but before chamfering
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After parting off the ring, I noticed a problem...
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The copper plugs were not centered within the band
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Measuring the offset with calipers wouldn’t be very accurate
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So I scanned the ring with a flatbed scanner and counted pixels
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Then I made a mandrel to hold the ring in the lathe again
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I then turned one side down a bit and re-chamfered the edges
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Finally, I polished it with Brasso and a Dremel with a felt tip
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The finished ring
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Finished ring, second view
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Finished ring, installed.