How to make a silver and turquoise inlay ring without a lathe

so in this video I'll be showing you how to make this solid silver ring that has an inlay of turquoise and all this without using a lathe so I'm making this ring so it will fit on my thumb but you can use this same process for any size this ring is going to be so I'll just be using this ring sizer to find the size I need and once I found the proper size I'm going to need to measure the inner diameter we're going to need that number along with a couple others so we can figure out how much material we're going to need the next measurement we're going to need is the thickness of the metal I was told by a subscriber there's a more accurate way of doing this so I'm going to be using their math equation to do so we just need to take the diameter we measured and divide it by 2 to get the radius and then add the thickness of the metal to that then take the radius and multiply it by two and then finally take that number and multiply it by 3.14 you know that 1.28 is the thickness of the wire I'm just going to take my calipers and lock them a place at that size so I can scribe a small line into our silver sheet metal one of the easiest ways to do this is to use a piece of metal that has straight lines it makes it easy to scribe the line perfectly straight and it gives you less cuts that you have to do I'm going to be using some 16 gauge squares over wire on either side of the ring and I'm going to make the ring about 8 millimeters tall so I'm going to use the calipers to strive another line into our silver sheet metal that intersects with the last one that we did this will give us the outline for the ring blank that we're going to need so with something like this I like to cut the shortest line first and then cut out the longer one seeing that it has more support always make sure to lubricate your saw blade before cutting and let's get this hole cut out just take your time when using the jeweler saw and make sure to go as straight as possible and there we go now we have a silver ring blank I'm going to file back both of the edges that I had to cut on so they're going to be as uniform as possible your aim here is just to make it as uniform as possible using your bench pin as a support and a hand file this piece is already dead soft so it doesn't need to be annealed and I can move directly on to forming it around the mandrel so if yours isn't make sure to anneal it and then move on to this next step and basically all you're going to want to do is wrap it around the mandrel it doesn't matter exactly where you do it because this won't be the final sizing and with the rawhide hammer we're going to just hammer these two pieces down and it's totally fine if they don't meet one another so once the ring is like this we're gonna watch you Bend both of these pieces as flat as possible so they meet up so they have a really strong solder joint I'm going to use some pliers have no teeth on them so it doesn't Mar up our piece or leave any marks the goal here is to get the two pieces to come together as tight as possible with no gaps and to be as flat as possible this can be very finicky you just take your time with it and be very patient this will make a major difference later on when you're trying to form the ring around the mandrel to make it round again once you've soldered it if your ring happens to split while you're hammering on the mandrel it's because you didn't do this first part correctly and you need to go back and do it again once I have this to my liking I'm gonna use the jeweler solid to cut through the joint to make sure that both sides are symmetrical now it's time to solder it I'm going to be using a third hand to hold it up in the air and place the solder joint facing down then I'm going to flux the top and bottom of the solder joint with some handy flux I'll have links to all the tools and materials used in this video in the description below and in the cards in the top corner so now all I need to do is add a couple pieces of hard solder to the inside of the band I'm placing these make sure that both of them are over the joint so when the solder flows it goes between the two pieces so now I'm going to evenly heat the entire piece if your solder starts to move around on you just make sure that it's on the joint and you should be fine if it does move off of it just use some tweezers to move it back after this make sure to check both sides to make sure that there's no holes or gaps if there are make sure to pickle this piece then add flux to it again and add solder if needed or just reheat the piece so the solder flows properly so after pickling the piece that can now start shaping it around the mandrel using my rawhide mallet all you need to do is lightly hammer the piece until it becomes a circle also keep in mind this mandrel has a taper to it so you're gonna have to take it off flip it around and work the other side so you don't have a taper to your ring so after all that it doesn't quite fit my thumb and this isn't really a problem all I need to do is hammer it back on the mandrel again to stretch it just a little bit more I'll be using a little bit more force on my hammer strikes to make this happen and there we go it is a little snug but this will go away once we start to polish and clean it up making it a lot more comfortable and easier to get on and off so now I need to clean up the outside of the band where the solder joint is I need the whole band to be uniform for the next part to work I'm going to use a hand file to do this and make sure to go over in a curved motion because if I just go straight on to this it will make a flat spot and that won't work with what we're doing right now once that's all nice and uniform I'm going to need to sand down the edge of the ring this is because where the solder joint came together there's a little tiny bump there and we wanted to be completely flush away across all I need is a flat surface a little bit of water and some 220 grit sandpaper so I'm going to use the same method I use to make the center band to make the outer bands for this piece the only difference is I want these pieces to be extremely snug on the center band and just so you know that 1.28 is the thickness of the wire once I have these measurements I can start straightening out my wire and removing any type of burrs or uneven ins to them so they're as flat as possible and using my calipers I could scratch in a line where I need to cut and I'm going to do this the total of two times for two bands and then just cut them off with the jeweler saw now that I have both those pieces it's time to start forming them mandro in the past I've had problems with square wire on the mandrel because of the taper it has so I'd like to use the handle of the mandrel because it has no taper whatsoever and it keeps these perfectly straight I'll be using the same technique I used on the center band to get these ready for soldering I did need to file down the ends of these a little bit because there was a little bit of a bird left over from sawing them just be patient because square wire can be very annoying to get lined up properly once I got everything to my liking I used the jeweler saw to cut through the joint to make sure that both sides are gonna be as tight as possible when I saw the room and you'll do exactly the same thing for the other band soldering these are pretty easy I'm just putting them on a flat charcoal block add some flux to the solder joint area and take a piece of hard silver solder and place it underneath the joint this way you can heat the piece extremely fast and you don't have to worry about your solder jumping off of it this is due to the weight of the metal being on top of it and it has nowhere to go and then as soon as it flows it will flow up the solder joint if you have a tight enough joint there when heating pieces like this I'd like to use a circular pattern around them and once I see the solder flow I focus my torch on that area for about a second and then take it away once you're done soldering these make sure to quench and pickle them once they're done in the pickling solution I'm going to form them around the mandrel to make them into circles be careful when forming these pieces if you hit them too hard or too much you can stretch them and they won't fit as snug as they need to on the center band because these are wire they can become bent very easily from hammering and they'll have to be flattened back out I used my anvil to do so and my hammer now that I have a perfect circle I can start soldering it onto my Center band you're going to want to flex the outside of the center band and basically the entire other band and then you just need to put them together I suggest using a flat surface so they're going to be as even as possible so pretty much just like that you could solder it like this and just place a medium solder on the joint but what I'm going to do is flip this piece over and use medium solder on the outside I'm going to add a little bit of extra flux to it and then just add four pieces of medium solder around the edge of the Ring and then I'm just going to evenly heat the piece in circles until I see the solder flow and same thing if anything falls off just pick it up some tweezers and place it back where it was after quenching the peace make sure to check that there's no holes or gaps in the solder joint and if there is just pickle it add flux to the areas and add a tiny bit more solder if needed adding the second bandage is just like adding the first only difference is we're going to be using easy solder on this one you probably can get away with using medium because of how far away they are from one another but I'm not going to risk it and I'm just going to use easy and just like the first band make sure after quenching this to check if there's any spots that are missing solder because you want these to be as uniform as possible so after pickling it everything looks pretty good and now we could finally move on to the setting some stones into it so now all I need to do is clean up both sides of this so you can't tell that these are three different pieces of metal and I'll do so using that same 220 grit sandpaper with some water because I'm using an adhesive to do all this I'm going to have to scuff up inside the ring so it has something to grab onto and this 80 grit sanding disk will do just the trick so once all that's done I'm gonna put the ring back onto the mandrel this will make it a lot easier for me to handle it when working with adhesives and stones and a stone I'm going to be using is some crushed-up turquoise and I'm going to use some brass filings to fill in some areas and add some colors this piece and the key to making all of this work is some thin CA glue and some sort of activator for the glue I'm going to be using this on my tripod without anything on top of it this way I have something to keep the mandrill on that has a hole in the center so if any glue drips off or if any stones fall they fall through this piece and don't get stuck to everything else so after looking at the stones they're not crushed up nearly enough for this so I'm going to show you how do you crush them more or just crush them in general first thing I do is place them all onto my anvil and then take a piece of paper towel and fold it over itself a couple times and place it on top of these pieces and then carefully hammer away and just carefully peel up your paper towel and take the pieces out of it and scoop them into a container just repeat this process until everything is to the size you want before we do anything else you need gloves for this because we are going to be working with super glue and it's going to get all over your hands so to start all you need to do is put a drop of super glue onto the center part of the ring and then take a pinch of your stones and place it on top of it you can move them around with some tweezers if you need to and once you have some stones in place add a little bit more glue to them and you're basically going to continue to do this all the way around the ring you once I get a decent amount in an area I'm gonna put some brass filings on top of it this will help fill in a lot of the gaps and leave a cool pattern inside of it instead of using metal shavings you can also use a finer powder of the stone that you're using to fill in these areas you once you have stones around the entire piece you can spray it with an activator the activator basically hardens your glue instantly and sadly my can of activator is just about empty so now that everything's hardened here's the part where a lathe would have came in really handy for doing this but we're going to be doing with just a hand file before you start filing this down make sure you have a dust mask I highly doubt you want to be breathing in stone dust I'm going to be using the same technique I used earlier when I filed down the solder joint so my goal here is to not make any flat spots by filing in a curved motion over the ring I also want to keep my file on here as straight as possible so it's only making contact with the stone I want to file the stone down so it's flush with the silver bands on the sides of the Ring this first go at filing down the stone took about six minutes in total of filing non-stop so there's still a bunch of gaps and holes to be filled in and I was using some brass filings to do so but I ran out of those and I found that I have a bunch of silver filings that I can use instead so I'm just going to add some glue to this so my filings will stick to it and then just start adding filings around the entire ring adding glue when needed you so there we go the entire piece is covered in the filings and every hole or gap should be filled now you can spray the activator on this now and it'll harden everything up but I'm out of it and the activator and my glue tend to turn white when I spray them together sometimes and I don't want to risk that so I'm just gonna let this air dry for about an hour just to be safe so now that everything is all dry and ready for filing I can start on that it's gonna be the same exact technique as before you just want to make sure that everything as flush as possible with the silver on the outside also make sure to check for any holes or gaps that you missed and if you find any make sure to fill them in and then start this again you and here it is all filed down I actually really liked how the stone and metal pattern turned out but we're not done yet we still have sanding and polishing to do so with the ring back on the mandrel I'll be using some 220 grit sandpaper with some water to go over the entire piece and make sure everything is pretty uniform so normally I be using different grits of sandpaper and working my way up to about a thousand grit but for the life of me I cannot find any of my sandpaper so I'm going to be using these sanding discs that have different grits to them that also go up to a thousand and this one happens to be 400 grit and this purple one is a 600 and finally this light green one is 1000 when using these I had to be very careful not to push too hard or make the RPMs go too high so I don't cut little grooves and divots into this so it'd be a lot easier to use sandpaper or even sanding sticks so to get that nice smooth and shiny finish I'm going to be using a felt wheel with some polishing compound on the outside and edges of the ring be careful when doing this the ring will get extremely hot as you polish it so for the inside of the ring I need to clean up the solder joint from when we put the inner band together to do this I'm just going to be using one of my rubber and diamond bits this will remove all the extra solder on the inside the ring and blend everything together so it looks seamless now finish up the inside I'll be using the same polishing compound with a smaller felt wheel and after all that here's the finish ring so the point of this video is you don't need to have a lathe to make something like this granted having one would have made things a lot easier and a lot faster but I wanted to show that there is more than one way to do this so I hope I was able to break this down enough so you can actually make one of these for yourself or someone else well thanks for watching my video and if you learn something from it feel free to leave a like and if you have any questions leave a comment and if you want to be updated whenever I upload new videos feel free to subscribe to my channel I try to get new videos up every week alright thanks for watching bye [Music]

Channel: GomeowCreations

Views: 1,986,860

Rating: 4.8653011 out of 5

Keywords: how to make a ring, ring making, how to, stone inlay, Patrick Adair Designs, etsy seller, engagement ring styles

Id: k2JKO5Pgjwg

Length: 17min 27sec (1047 seconds)

Published: Mon Oct 21 2019

Reddit Comments

[u/anubuk]

Gorgeous! I look forward to learning how to inlay stone into rings.