The making of a ring

Well yesterday I made two silver rings, and as promised I have taken photos of the process, yes including something that went wrong.

The first thing to do was marking out  the shape on the silver sheet, which I then cut with the piercing saw.

Next I used one of my needle files to smooth the rough edges left by the saw. And as you can see from the picture I made a mark with my centre punch, this is where I want to drill the hole for the silver tube.

I then textured the silver on my block using a hammer.

Using my drill I made a small pilot hole before the next stage.

Time to shape the rings, first I used ring bending pliers, then it was on to the ring mandrel and hammering it a bit more to finish the shape.

Now its time to get the pilot hole made bigger so the tube would fit. I slowly increased the hole size by drilling with a slightly bigger drill bit each time, until I got to the right size.

While the tube was in the hole I added the bead and measured the amount of tube needed and cut it to length.

On the second ring I found it easier to flare the tube first add the bead add the ring and then measure and cut.

I flared out the tube on the back of the ring and threaded on the bead, and tried to flare the front. It was going okay and then ping, one of the points of the star cracked, all was not lost as I had another bead. 

Success with the second bead, this time I took care with flaring out the tube, I used my centre punch to help flare out. Now I had a spare ring base with no bead. I had a quick look in my orphan jar and found a nice bead to use. As I said above this time I flared the tube, added the bead, measured and cut, then added to the ring and flared the tube at the back.

So to the final stage polishing, I like polishing, even if it can be a bit messy at times.

The beads were still a bit wobbly at this stage so I added a Jump ring to the top rivet, which stopped the wobble.

So there we are all finished, I learnt a lot from the process and have some tips for the tube riveting. Make sure the tube is fully annealed, and use dapping / doming punches to flare out the tube.

The rings look lovely on my hand and the beads spin on the base too, I am very tempted to keep them. If I do decided to sell them I will get them Hallmarked first, but thats my next blog post.