Making the story of 'O' ring.
1/1/97
This project was my first time working with silver. I made
the ring as a gift for a friend, but I took pictures so that
I could remember it after I gave it away.
I have had two similar rings made for me in the
past, but the person who made them has been unreliable
lately. This combined with my feeling that making a gift for
someone is much more special than buying one spawned this
project.
The ring is made of sterling silver with an
alexandrite
set in the top. It's synthetic
alexandrite due to the
extremely high price of natural stones (they're very rare
and more expensive than diamonds). The synthetic stone is
chemically identicle to a natural stone (beryllium aluminum
oxide) and maintains its color changine properties.
Alexandrite
changes color from green to purple (and in between)
depending on whether it's viewed under natural or artificial,
direct or indirect light.
The ring is make from several pieces, the band, hoop, and
setting. I used my dremel to cut a 0.6" wide strip with a
length slightly larger than the circumference of the ring
from a piece of 20 gauge silver sheet. The silver sheet was
soft enough that I was able to slowly wrap it around a sizing
mandrel by hand. Then I got to the ends and I didn't have enough
leverage so I had to use needle nose pliers to finish. I
made the hoop from 12 gauge silver wire which I wrapped around
a sharpie permanent marker (which seemed to be about the right
size) into a spiral. I located the most round full turn in
the spiral and cut it out with my dremel. The setting was
made from three parts, a piece of 1/4 inch diameter silver
tubing and two hollow silver beads which I cut to make the
reflector and the top piece which holds the stone in place.
Since the stone is essentially transparent, the reflector
which is a conical piece of silver is placed underneath to
help reflect light back out of the stone. The top piece
was cut from a doughnut shaped silver bead.
After forming the band it needed to be soldered. Silver
solder comes in various temperature grades: Hard, Medium,
Easy and Extra-easy. The theory is that you start with
Hard (the highest temperature) and work your way down
through the grades as you work on various parts of the
piece so that you don't accidently reflow the joints that
you've already soldered. Well, perhaps I should have
been concerned that the opposite of hard was easy, not
soft. As in difficult - because it was extremely difficult
to work with. I was having a lot of trouble heating
the work enough with my oxy-propane torch to melt the
hard solder. At one point I actually ended up melting
the silver before the solder! There I was with a pile of
silver slag with a solid piece of solder sitting on top.
So, I switched to medium and had much less trouble.
Even then it wasn't particularly easy, I've been soldering
for about twelve years (but only rescently with a torch)
but I still had the most amazing pile of solder caked up
by the time I had it everywhere I wanted. I had to spend
quite a bit of time grinding with my dremel to bring it
back to its correct shape. Surprizingly you can't even
tell in the finished piece which I attribute to my
skill with a dremel (if only my skill with a torch was
as good). The picture above is of me drilling the hole
in the setting through which the hoop will pass.
After the soldering and grinding it was time to polish.
The greenish lump on the left is the polishing compound.
After that I set the stone. Before I soldered the
setting onto the band I drilled a hole through the
band so that the stone could be pushed in from the
bottom. Once the jem was aligned properly I filled the
setting with white epoxy putty which you can see oozing
from the holes on the sides in the picture. After it
set I re-drilled the hole for the hoop through the
solid putty.
I slipped the hoop in and gave it a twist to close it.
I wrapped a piece of wet paper towel and a strip of
metal over the jem to protect it from the heat of
soldering the hoop.
After grinding and polishing the hoop, we're done!
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