Creating the Galaxy Cluster Ring from Opal, Resin and Tungsten

hey everybody in this week's video we're gonna be making a ring with a tungsten core we're gonna take some of these large white opal chunks and we're gonna attach them on there with a little bit of CA glue just just a little bit and then we're gonna dye some of this alumalite with this carbon pigment and make a nice casting so I put the tungsten core on a mandrel just so it's easier to hold and I'm just gonna make a little bead of the CA glue on my table and what I'm gonna do is just grab a small chunk of opal and just dip it in the CA just a little bit and then let it stick to the band and then we're just gonna keep repeating this process and it kind of random order until we've covered the whole core and that way we can get a nice and even distribution of our white opals on there [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] it's a little hectic deciding where to put these on the band but I think it looks okay so now that we have the entire thing covered we can go ahead and get to work on our casting this is probably the most important step of the string I have to make an inner and an outer mold out of some card stock and I have to completely seal the bottom so that when I fill it up with the resin it won't be forced out because we're gonna put this in a pressure pot so that there's no air bubbles at all but I'm gonna go ahead and show this whole process of how I make this mold because it can be kind of complicated [Music] now that we have our casting done we're gonna mix our resin it's a one-to-one ratio and this is a small amount that I'm using so using something with a vial like this to measure it out to get a good mix is really important because if you don't have a one-to-one on the hardener and resin then it'll come out either really cloudy or it won't cure up all the way and then you would have just wasted a ton of time so I use this little vial and only go about one and a half on each one and once we have it in the cup we're just gonna add our black pigment and mix it up and Illumina lights great too because it has a really long working time that's really thin so it mixes up quickly and is really forgiving so we're gonna go ahead and do that and then get our resin in the molding [Music] [Music] now the resident is totally mixed so we can just begin pouring we're just gonna start on one side and slowly fill and let it completely work its way around the mold and that way we don't pour over and end up with any baking trapped air bubbles in there this is the best way to get a good even moulding in here [Music] so now we're gonna take our cast and put it in the pressure pot and what this does is puts the cast under air pressure so that the tiny bubbles inside of the viscous resin shrink and you can't even see them if you have a pressure paw this is the easiest way to get a really clear cast without any large bubbles that'll be like a real eyesore on the ring and you're putting this thing under a lot of pressure so when you're wrenching down these clamps you really can't have them tight enough I've noticed if I don't like turn them all the way until they won't turn anymore around 40 psi you'll start to hear the top of the the pot hiss so you really really want to get as tight as you can [Music] so I have the air compressor hooked up to the pot and we're slowly filling it with the compressed air and you really don't want to do this too quickly because you could blow your mold and knock it over by forcing air into the pot too quickly so we'll just take our time and fill it all the way to about 45 psi you want to leave it in there until it's dry then they usually take an hour or two but then you can take it out and you can see that it has completely set up the last step to cure is to put it in an oven at 150 for about an hour and then once we're done with that we can take it to the belt sander and really grind down all the excess paper and casting for the mold [Music] it took about 15 minutes and an entire belt but it's all the way down to the tungsten now this makes it really easy to pull that core out of there because we can't get it on a ring mandrel if it's got all that resin inside of it so we're just gonna ship that away and then eventually we'll be able to pull that whole piece off [Music] now that it's on a ring mandrel we can put on the lathe and turn it down all the way until we find that opal near the core this will take a little while so we're just gonna use a tungsten rougher and we're gonna work our way down and once we get close we'll just switch to sandpaper go through a couple different grits before we clear coating [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] our last step is gonna be to clear coat in the loom UV it's super easy and convenient to use and it has the same hardness as alumalite casts all you have to do is use a paintbrush and you'll put a thick coat on there because it's a very viscous resin and then you'll give it a UV bath for about five minutes and it'll cure up and you can do multiple coats I usually like to scuff it up with some steel wool between each one to get a good mechanical grip but after a few coats it creates a really nice glass finish on this ring [Music] I really like the way the ring came out and I liked being able to use the pressure pot and the UV baths those are neat pieces of equipment for me I'm gonna be critical and say that I probably will go with smaller opals next time because I wanted them to kind of be lurking like in the black and the bigger ones are just really in your face you can see there's some smaller ones under there and that's kind of what I was going for but I really I can't complain other than that I just want to say thanks for all the support over the last few weeks I'm getting a lot more views than I ever thought I would if you liked this one please subscribe if you didn't like it thanks for watching anyway and I'll have another one up next week

Channel: Tempest Rings

Views: 386,456

Rating: 4.9476671 out of 5

Keywords: ring, rings, tungsten, wood, wood ring, mineral, how to, satisfying, lathe, tempest rings, etsy, etsy seller, make, maker, diy, shop, drill press, abrassive, sand, polish, acrylic, woodworking, jewlery, opal, white opal, wedding, engagment, engagement ring, wedding ring, blue opal, crushed opal, synthetic, sythetic opal, galaxy, space, alumilite, alumiUV, resin, epoxy, outer space

Id: 2tKw4GM4LyU

Length: 11min 4sec (664 seconds)

Published: Sat Dec 02 2017