Published September 2020
Summer 2020 is Covid season. You spend a lot of time at home surrounded by very few, select people. One of two things usually tends to happen in such a scenario: you either grow apart or you grow closer... In our case it was the latter, which is around the time I decided to "put a ring on it" (in the eternal words of Beyoncé). Personally I am the kind of person who gives value to handmade things, so for me it was clear that if she got a ring, I would do it myself.
Not far from where I live there is a metal shop specialized in large metal constructions and welding, I asked one of the workers there if they had some cylindrical scrap steel piece laying around. There wasn't but the guy was nice enough to cut me a 8cm piece, more than I needed. This I took to my dad's place, where in his basement he has a small lathe.
During my Bachelor studies in mechanical engineering I had a 4 week introduction on turning, milling, welding and bending. That was 13 years ago... In the meantime I had not done much on a lathe, so I watched a couple of videos and got familiar with turning speeds and tools again, before I started the project. With a few pointers from my younger brother on tool setting it was actually surprisingly easy. In the end the ring came out beautifully and very much as I had hoped it would! Check out the video for all the details.
For measures I had a look at a ring that was laying around at home and had seen hear wearing a couple of times already. Note that here very small differences play a huge role, an inner diameter difference of 0.5mm can be the difference between very comfortable fit and needing to force it on and use lube to get it off.
The polished final ring
I was not gonna offer her a self-made ring in a bought box. So the next step of the project was to make a nice box to offer the ring in. There is a buzz saw standing next to the lathe in my dad's basement, so that's what I used.
The trouble here was that I wanted the edges of the box to join in a 45° angle instead of just glueing one side wall of the box next to the other. While it looks much nicer in my opinion it's also a lot harder to achieve, especially if your saw has very limited measurement settings. It ended up being a bit of a trial and error approach to get it about right and I ended up having to file the pieces just a little bit for the final fit.
Using a sponge and some soft felt sheet I made a lid-inlay to hold the ring in place. Wrapping it all with a lovely red ribbon and the gift was ready.
The short conclusion is: she said yes, it worked!
Having a closer look at the work and outcome, I am very happy with the ring. It came out beautifully and is looking exactly as I had imagined. This was an especially encouraging outcome since, as mentioned, I have little experience on lathes.
In the end the box took almost as much time as the ring. I think if I had to redo that I would try to find a shop with a couple of more precise tools to get the angles and measurements inside the angles to a better fit. Nevertheless the box looks lovely and the very slight imperfection in the corners actually gives it that hand-made look and feel.
