odd coincidence

[wetfeet]

I used to fool around with casting precious metals, and about 15 years ago, maybe a bit more, I made myself this ring in the photos.

The ring for me was inspired by machined off-road after market motorcycle parts, as I did a bit of racing back then. I put holes in the ring just as an homage to the lightening of parts by drilling, and when I finished it, I didn't want it to have a completed buffed shiny look. Instead I gave it a brushed finish and I had cut some bevels into it, these I decided to polish to a mirror brightness.

The rings I designed I liked to have surprises, so on the bottom (palm) side of the ring I mounted a small diamond that could be a secret for the wearer only.

After I bought my ROO I remembered this ring that I made, I just dug it up and I thought it was interesting how the design elements matched up. The choice of straight brushed finish on flat areas, and then mirror polish on the bevels was identical. The eight sided bezel echoed the octagon that forms the table of the diamond. I've got a lot more holes but they match a bit with the mounting for the band. And both have a secret on the bottom.

The ROO is gold tinted with copper, and my ring I made from platinum and palladium and then tinted it with gold.

My ring is a bit beaten on being 15 years old and not comparing quality of work as I'm just a hack making this in my kitchen but obviously I liked these design elements when I made my ring and I wonder if subconsciously it brought me to the selection of this style among the AP watches.

Strange.

[wingku]

pretty cool match in heaven!

[Hairdude1]

Very cool

[Monte Cristo]

very nice!

[AshAP]

You must be very talented if you knocked that up in your kitchen!

[B. Doggy]

Cool, man

[Dickson Lim]

Originally Posted by AshAP

You must be very talented if you knocked that up in your kitchen!

Seriously talented I must say!

[wetfeet]

Originally Posted by AshAP

You must be very talented if you knocked that up in your kitchen!

Thanks much.

I started making jewelery as a hobby and quickly came to understand I didn't have the hands for it. Probably similar to what a watchmaker needs. I had a friend who was a Swiss trained jeweler and they made very precision things by hand, forging every element.

It was easier for me to design using 3d software. Rapid prototyping I think was fairly new and I found someone that could run my design off of the prototyper. This produced a wax model, it took about 12 hours for the thing to build the wax from my design.

I had my kitchen filled with nice things like nitric acid, 30% H2O2 and blowtorches of various types. I had a windup centrifugal casting machine but that wouldn't cast platinum, which needs a gravity assist swing arm machine due to the rapid solidification.

So I made a mold using lost wax type of fabrication, and started with an oxygen torch melting a tiny bit of platinum which I would dope a little with palladium and gold, both of which dropped the melting point of the alloy until I felt I could use the gold casting machine to cast it.

From there it was a matter of melting the ingot made above, letting the casting machine rip, and then breaking the mold which is an exciting process. When the mold its a bucket of water it pretty much explodes (not much energy though) and you then fish around in the opaque water and find your item and hope it came out right.

From there it was a matter of drilling the holes out as they didn't fully form, doing the polish, which is laborious but very satisfying, and mounting the stones.

The deep V that the stone sits in exposes the pavillion which keeps the stone very bright. Tinting the platinum also by color contrast makes the diamond look whiter though it's two grades off of white. But I made the deep V really because I am crap at designing mounts. This was very mathematically simple, I used a micrometer to measure the height and width of the diamond which let me make the V in the ring a perfect match for it. Aside from the measurements, it was then just a simple cut through the model, and a little hole in the bottom for the culet, and drop four posts straight down. The posts are just simply platinum wires that are dropped into and soldered into holes in the shank.

So it was really just planned for easy in design and in mounting, to keep within my skill level, and as well made a fairly unique and modern type of mount in keeping with the motorcycle machined-part look.

It was the last ring I made, then sold my gear. Expensive hobby, too much toxic chemicals around and too many hours by yourself and nobody to share the results with. I never took a photo of it until this year, 15 years later.

Coming up with interesting designs is very hard. Happy I did it though. I still really like it and I know there is nothing like it out there.

Very pleased that it matches my watch!

Thanks again for the compliments. I was never particularly good at this stuff and the lack of skill is what made me design within the bounds of what I could fabricate. That made for some interesting things because I was not as good as other people.

[wetfeet]

Also precious metals were dirt cheap then. Wish I could go back to the time of $250 gold and $425 platinum.