Famous Jewelry Collections: THE BEADING GEM'S JOURNAL

Wednesday, January 23, 2013

THE BEADING GEM'S JOURNAL

How to Make a Stamped Ring using a Metal Blank

Posted: 23 Jan 2013 05:00 AM PST

I know some of you are reluctant to venture into metal smith techniques. But really, there are some simple things you can learn to do. Here is an easy start - use a metal ring blank as I did for one of the Impressart metal stamp designs I showed earlier for this week's giveaway !

The pre-cut ring metal blanks mean you don't have to cut or saw from metal sheets! All you have to do is a little stamping, hammering, forming perhaps some sanding and viola! You got yourself a ring! Be sure to get the right size ring blanks and in the width you like.

First thing to do is to prepare the blank - the one I used is aluminium. If the edges are rough, sand them smooth with some steel wool. I just used a piece of scotch tape to hold the blank in place and marked where I wanted the flower centers to be. The flowers consist of the "o" and the "v" from the Jeanie lower case letter set. You can use any design stamp you like!

I struck harder than I needed to so that the indentations were deep and looked less like letters.

I colored the impressions with a black marker pen and then wiped off the ink from the surface with a folded up piece of paper towel.

Next, I used the hemispherical head of my ball-peen hammer to texture the surface around the flowers. The texturing also hid the slight scratch marks on the surface. This saved a tumbling step!

Then onwards to some preliminary forming. I do have stepped ring forming pliers which easily gripped the blank and helped in the bending process. Alternatively, you could use a dowel.

I finished up the forming and work hardening by hammering the ring with my nylon hammer on a metal ring mandrel. As the ring mandrel is tapered, I hammered on one side of the ring, removed it completely from the mandrel, turned the ring around and replaced it on the mandrel for the second half of the hammering on the mandrel. This maintains an even ring size.