Shinium - Brilliance by Design

I was asked by some friends recently if I could make them some wedding rings from electrum. Electrum is an alloy of gold and silver, and it's incredibly pretty. But it's kind of hard to work - the standard way of making a ring, by folding a piece of sheet or wire and soldering it closed doesn't work. While electrum is very hard, it has a relatively low melting point, so you can't use normal silver solder on it (also, silver or gold solder would show up as a visible join). I have fused a few rings from sheet electrum, but it's very hard to get a clean join - the ring ended up slightly asymmetric , which isn't always a problem but for wedding rings it didn't seem right. So, time to learn how to cast metal. I bought a Delft Clay Casting kit and got to practising. After a few goes I dived right on in to making the rings. It's a fairly simple process but an interesting one. First up, making a wooden former which is slightly smaller on the inside and sli...

Wooden rings benefit from a good tough, protective coating both for visual appeal and to keep them safe from scratches and knocks. CA (superglue) is perfect for this. It dries very hard, very tough and super glossy. The process for finishing a ring is pretty easy. It's as simple as building a few layers on the ring, sanding flat and then polishing to a shine. The ring featured below only took ten minutes from start to finish, which is helped by using an accelerator spray on the CA, but even without that you can do the whole job in well under an hour. Before starting, the ring has been sanded to 1500 grit, dusted and cleaned with white spirit, then mounted on my turning jig (OK, OK, it's a power drill clamped to my bench - but it works!). This process can be used for metal rings too - a coat of CA will protect a gilded finish, or stop copper from tarnishing. For a change, I've made a video of the process rather than photos. Here we go, apologies in advance for dodgy ed...