Damascus ring

M

Mungo Park

Joined
Jan 23, 2005
Messages
337
HI all.
The search button does not seem to work for me.:grumpy:
I am looking for any info on making a damascus wedding ring band. A fellow a while back posted a photo of one he had made and it looked real trick to say the least.
I was going to make mine out of damsteel any info or help would be nice.
Thanks Ron
 
Mungo,
Call me 2312384705, other than a quick trip to the bank at 330p est I should be home all day. Cleaning the house today.
Thanks
Del
If I don't answer in 3 rings I'm online.
 
I'll give you a simplified procedure.
Get a disk of damascus cut off from a round twisted billet. It should be big enough to make the ring from ( about 1" round by 1/2" thick). Drill/bore a center hole a little smaller than the finger size desired. Trim the disk down to a ring about 1/4" thick. Start increasing the hole size until it is just shy of the size wanted. Mount the ring on a lathe and turn it to the dome shape and thickness desired. Sand the insides smooth,rounding toward the edges a bit to give it a comfort fit.Sand the outside to a very smooth surface.Coat the inside with a resist compound ( nail polish will work fine) and etch the ring to develop the pattern on the outside. Neutralize and polish.
This should work fine with stainless damascus. Just have the maker cut you some 1/2" slices from a round twist billet.If the billet is not wide enough to make the ring from, you can bore out the blank with 1/4" walls and forge it to a larger size on a tapered mandrel.
Hope this helps. Stacy
 
Another good option is to inlay mokume or damascus into a harder ring such as stainless or titanium. It's a bit less work than creating the entire ring from the material and still looks nice.

Here's what can be done there:
rosegoldshakudotwist.jpg


I do lots of combinations but this one is rose gold and shakudo (gold & copper alloy) where the shakudo is blackened. The inert gold or titanium isn't affected by the sulphur.
 
not to shoot down any ideas but if you do a search there was a thread on titanium rings and tungsten rings, and their bad sides.

i guess if you break your finger and it starts to swell up its pretty tough for doctors to cut off the titanium ring to save the finger, and as far as the tungsten i believe they just wack it really hard to shatter it..
i'm sure not gonna have that happen to my hand.

but damn thats a beautiful ring! i have palladium and green gold twist bookmatched into two matching rings for my wedding bands.
 
Titanium can indeed be cut with a hacksaw, Dremel, or ring cutter. I make the rings full time now and once had a customer that had to get one cut off. It was easily done and she ordered another. I think a lot of the internet horror stories started with a guy who used a hardened bearing race as a ring and they had problems with that. I can cut through a ring with a hacksaw in about 8 seconds, not that you would do it like that while it's on a finger, but I do show people that demonstration if they have that question and they're in my shop.

With tungsten, it's made from powder, so it's relatively brittle. It's hard to do inlays like the one I showed without cracking the ring. The usual way to crack them off is with visegrips or a vise. They'll crack without much deflection. I've removed both types of rings from my own fingers just to prove it to myself.

I do some green gold and palladium ones too. I find that the gold isn't all that green looking. I have my mokume made by a specialist in that field into strips or sheets for my inlays. Do you find that to be true, or is yours pretty obviously green?
 
The lower the karat gold,the better color is achived.10K is the lowest karat that can be marked in the USA. 10k green does look fairly green when compared to 18k green,the same applies to the other colored golds.
 
WoW great thread here. I was thinking I was a little off topic with this request but now I am glad I asked. It seems like a natural extension of knife making.
Thanks all for your input.
I do work in a hospital and cutting a ring off is a last resort and everything is done first before a persons ring is cut. I have seen some big fingers but and have not seen a ring cut off yet, it is quite rare. Also the ring can stay on unless it is so tight it is cutting off the blood flow.
Del did mention to me his rings also start as strips as the drilling out a hole discards way too much valuable material. It is only practical for damascus which is what I plan to use.
Cheers Ron.
 
I agree that having to cut a ring is pretty rare. I've made about 10,000 rings and the one instance is the only one I know of with my rings.

Another very interesting ring material is an iron meterorite. I haven't done one myself, but I've made titanium rings to be inlayed with them for another manufacturer. Very cool ring.
 
my ring turned out to be a pretty light green but you can tell its green.
the colors showed up more with a satin finish than with a higher polish though
 
Here's mine with green gold. The gold has just a slight off yellow tinge of green. Unless comparing to regular gold, it would be hard to tell.

greengoldtwist.jpg
 
They do good work. I do something similar, but by a different method. They use timascus, which is a combination of CP and 6/4 titanium. Mine uses all 6/4. The anodizing can do contrasting colors within the ones shown in the color chip.

mokano.jpg
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top