Pulling up anchor
8th March 2019
The owner of the ring works in the maritime industry.
This ring was larger than a size Z+6. It was so large that it was bigger than the handle on my ring sizer. I used a baby bangle mandrel to make it.
The issue with the ring was that the base was too thin. It had been repaired/resized and was showing a crack at that join on the inside as the bottom of the ring flexed/bent inwards. I forgot to take a photo from that angle sorry.
As a ring gets bigger the easier it is to bend out of shape and it needs to be made stronger than a smaller size/diameter ring. Rather than repair the ring I was asked to restore it fixing some other issues on the way.
Changes to the shape of the anchor to the right done in Photoshop on the right.
Ever since the original ring was created the owner has felt that the anchor was not quite right. I edited a photo of the anchor until the changes reflected what he had in mind. You will also notice that the anchor seems squashed into the ring. We changed that as well.
The size draft fitted over my ring stick handle.
A ring like this will have a very small tolerance for resizing so we needed to get it right. To ensure that the size was correct I made a silver draft that refected the same impression on the finger. By resizing the draft we discovered that the ring needed to be about 2 sizes larger than we had planned.
With the design and finger size confirmed I could now make the ring. I created the plate in multiple pieces and then joined them together.
For the band I carved it out of wax to be created using lost wax casting. This article explains lost wax casting. Skip down to the section “Turning that wax into Gold”.
Article: Mould, mend and make
During the finishing the border around the head came out wider than planned. I could correct this but decided to show it to the customer first to see if he preferred the wider look. He did and the ring remain unchanged.
Thinking about recycling old gold jewellery?
This ring was remade using all the customers gold. In subtractive manufacturing you always need more gold than the finished product. When you use a customers gold they need to provide that extra gold.
I wrote a new article based on the above ring that discusses the cost analysis that needs to be done every time someone asks for a quote to use their old scrap jewellery.