Ring making process

[Nick martin]

Afternoon all,

Haven't been contributing much to the forum in recent months as haven't had a whole lot of spare time, but I am however still lurking in the shadows reading posts when I can.

Made this commissioned ring recently and thought I'd upload a couple of short video clips giving a basic outline of my work flow for any novices that are interested.

It's made from Argentium silver and the stone is a 9.5mm trillion pink sapphire. The designs not to my own personal taste, but it's what the customer asked for so fair enough. Luckily she's pleased with the finished ring.

Only slightly unusual thing about making this ring I'd say is that I chose to cast the bezel, and used cuttlefish to do it. As anyone who has seen my other posts on here, I'm a big fan of using cuttlefish due to its cost and what you can actually achieve with it which is sometimes surprising.
The only slight drawback is that there's more cleanup with cuttlefish items but still nothing drastic and it's resulted in a very strong bezel. The other advantage is that if I'd wanted to then the bezel could have been easily punched, textured or had details soldered onto it without fear of damaging the thin walls.

Anyway hope you like, any questions or critique the fire away as per usual.

Cheers,

Nick


https://youtu.be/7oiuZiIRV9I

https://youtu.be/Jj_2popwuNc

[J Allison]

Hi Nick lovely job . I have had problems doing a trillion , casting sounds like a plan as I have done cuttlefish casting before just curious as to how you did it . Did you push the stone into the cuttlefish and then cut away the seat?

[Nick martin]

Hi Allison and thankyou.

No I didn't have to cut any seats into the bezel which was another advantage. I 3D printed the bezel complete with the seat in the model, then used the plastic output to press into the cuttlefish.

Took a little bit of trial and error but simple once I got the hang of it.

Cheers,

Nick

[josef1]

Cool video, great solution to casting the printed part.

[Dennis]

Interesting Nick. Some pics of the finished ring would be nice now. Dennis.

[Nick martin]

Hi Dennis, and you're right.

I dont actually have any on my phone right now, but I'll upload some later this evening once I'm back home.

Nick

[Nick martin]

Interesting Nick. Some pics of the finished ring would be nice now. Dennis.

Here's a few pics of the process Dennis...

The stones I made the 3d bezels for, the bezels partially refined and the finished sapphire ring.

[Nick martin]

Thanks Josef,

I dont yet have the kit in order to do lost wax casting, so this is a cheap stop-gap in the meantime.

Nick

[TeeDee]

Hi Nick,
Good comeback!
Like you I've been 'off forum' for a while but still lurking.
I really like the idea of the cast trillion mount. I've fabricated a few but they are time consuming. Unfortunately I don't have 3D printing but I'd be interested to know more about your set up and what software you use. I'm thinking of getting a Delft casting set but am amazed at your result with the cuttlefish cast. Maybe I'll stop walking past them when I'm on the beach.
Tim