It’s the first piece I’ve finished that actually LOOKS like proper jewelry someone would buy. It looks worn because it is, I haven’t taken it off since I finished it yesterday hahah
It started life as 5 pennies. I like the permanence of overbuilt things, so the shank is staying too thick. The alexanderite is synthetic, and honestly a pretty sub-par cut. But it wouldn’t have fit in the head if it wasn’t abnormally shallow, so I can’t really complain.
Beautiful! May I ask how you made it? I don’t know a thing about reshaping pennies. Do you own a blacksmith’s forge?
Copper has a low enough melting point that I’m able to just hit it with an oxygen-acetylene torch and turn the pennies into a solid little blob. Then I hammer that down to a somewhat regular size and shape that’ll fit in my rolling mill.
On this particular ring I ran either side through the mill while leaving a bulbous lump in the center. I was originally planning to set a moderately larger oval ruby in it, so I needed as much metal for the head as possible.
From there it was just minor shaping, setting the stone, and a long stint on the buff. The slanty body lines and slopes on the top are actually an artifact of the rolling mill step. The mill is older then me, and likes to consistently cockeye your stock to the left. But consistent angles make for pretty geometry!
I had just enough metal to cover the height of the ruby, but I didn’t account for the curved surface of the ring. Once I sanded down a flat on the top for the stone to go in, it was ~2mm shorter than the stone.
You could just set a stone like that anyways, I have a few vintage pieces with oversized stones in undersized mountings. The culet, or point of the stone, pokes into your finger just a little bit. Makes em a real bitch to work on though, as you’ll need a slotted mandrel and a careful touch to do practically anything.
Beautiful. I can also see the freebooting websites’ headers now: “You won’t believe how this person got this beautiful ring for only pennies!”
What year were the pennies? Does it stain the ring finger?
All pre-1981, and yes it’ll turn you green hahah
The mechanics of it are rather interesting! It’s actually tiny bits of copper rubbing off and getting embedded in your skin, where the moisture causes them to quickly patina from orange, to brown, to green. The same thing happens when you do a lot of grinding or filing on copper; your hands get covered with bright copper dust, and then maybe an hour later they’re a sickly green.
Skin acidity has something to do with it as well, I know folks who have little to no reaction meanwhile half my finger is green when I wear these to bed.
Ahh, I figured. Modern ones melt funny with all that zinc.
I have heard of putting a layer of clear nail polish on the surfaces that touch the fingers to counter the staining. Never tried it myself though. At the time we had silver to work with, so I used that after practicing with copper and brass.
Cool stuff! The stone setting looks great!
Do you do any lost wax casting?
Funnily enough we have all the equipment for in house lost wax casting, including a homemade centrifuge (housed in a trashcan), and the ONE thing keeping that off the table currently is the fancy industrial furnace and it’s cheap, faulty thermostat. It’s one of the newest machines in the store and simultaneously the least functional.
We’ve got an engraver from the 40s, hand tools from the 30s, and a ring bender that I can’t get a date on, but it’s at least 100 years old. We’ve got jury-rigged setups that have outlived the man who hastily constructed them, meanwhile the BRAND NEW, PRODUCTION FURNACE is inoperable.
/rant lmao
Cool! Nice work! I like how it’s subtly asymmetrical without screaming “look how funky I am!”
Looks great. Honestly there’s an art to working with materials as they are so it’s cool you could work with the shallow alexanderite and make something great
