Rings

Below are various etched copper rings.  The pair on the left consist of a domed outer ring with a plain inner band; the leftmost has also been etched with a kind of ‘duck foot’ pattern. In the next photo, is a plain etched copper band.  I have always found these appealing, but they are very abrasive and uncomfortable to the touch, even after much tumbling and even hand burnishing. A solution of sorts was to fill the etched pits with enamel, but so far I have not been able to retain the deep sense of depth, the next picture gives some idea of this.
Incidentally, each of the domed rings above were made by doming two identical strips of copper in a doming block and sawing away anything that didn’t form part of the hemisphere, then soldering the two strips together to make a domed ring.  A third strip of greater width was soldered into a band to fit inside, sawn to fit perfectly then soldered at the edges.  The ring below left is silicon bronze domed as above, fitted with a fine-silver inner band.  Unfortunately, silicon bronze tarnishes rather rapidly when I wear it, but I have an aversion to paying £23/gm for fine gold to make an equivalent in 18K.  I have since found another way of making domed rings, by hammering a tube instead of a strip into a doming block.  The ring below centre and right was made in this way; it has an inner plain band inserted ready for subsequent operations, and additionally I have filed a flat on the surface to see what the options are for fitting a stone (e.g. a cabochon).
Encouraged by the ease of doming copper pipe and a copper band, I tried the same process using a silicon bronze band, well annealed. The first doming sequence on both sides produced a straight-forward rounding of both shoulders, nice and symmetric. It was annealed again, but doming now destroyed the shape, producing both warping (from circular section to elliptic) and crushing of the openings (falling into the centre). Back to the drawing board for a while… Below are the first three rings I made on a course at St Martins (now University of the Arts) with Martin Hopton as tutor.  The left-most ring is a cubic zirconia set into a sterling silver tube (which was made into a cone first), the next is dyed agate in a fabricated bezel, and the last consists of three CZ flush-set in a sterling silver band.  The setting marks left behind on this last ring are particularly objectionable, although I have improved somewhat since then.
In pursuit of making a twisted square-section sterling ring, some old square rod of about 2mm side was annealed then twisted with one end held in a vice, the other in pliers. This gave a twist of about 2.2mm diameter, with about 18 twists in a length of 76mm. The left-hand picture below shows the original square rod, and the twist result. I subsequently found that it was much more convenient to grip the rod at the operator end with bulldog grips, resulting in an easier, denser and more even twist. This twist was then annealed and formed into an open (unsoldered) ring before polishing, as in the centre picture below. The result, although reasonably pleasant after polishing with radial polishing wheels, was aesthetically too coarse a gauge. It was then re-annealed, straightened then untwisted. To my surprise, I managed to then roll it through the mill wire rollers to re-form perfect 2mm square rod. These latter wire rollers were not actually much use, because their minimum gauge is in fact 2mm – this accounts for the prevalence of 2mm square rod in my scrap box (all produced from old sprues). So it was rolled through the flat rollers instead, rotating the rod a quarter revolution each pass, to give a final gauge of 1.8mm square. It was then twisted in two stages with annealing to give a diameter of 1.85mm with 46 twists per 76mm. The right-hand picture below shows the result, after sanding to remove the very sharp profile of the twist, then polishing.  At some stage, I will get round to bending it into a ring and soldering!