acanthusleaf | (no subject)

Ok, folks, this was too cool a project not to share. This nice lady had a 15thC bronze ring with no stone, and she wants to wear it again. It used to have a roughly rectangular cabochon stone and was gilt. Here's the ring before I did anything to it but brush the dust off:

I dug around in my box of ill-advised gem show purchases and found a rectangular garnet cab a bit bigger than I needed. I took it over to Sam's house, and he showed me how to grind it down to the size I wanted and polish it up. Not too difficult when you have the right equipment, as he has. The ring was rather badly corroded, with pitting almost a millimeter deep in spots. I decided to burnish it before polishing to preserve as much of the original metal as possible. I knew it would never be perfect, but in this case preserving the original was more important. Here it is after burnishing:

Then I polished it carefully and set the garnet in the old bezel. This is the ring with the garnet in. My crap photography doesn't capture the stone color, but in this one the rather coppery tone of the bronze is pretty close to accurate.

I have sent it off to the plating pro and should have it back later this week. Woot! The ther bit of progress is a new ring. I've been wanting to do one like this for years, and our own dear

joeguppy sent me a photo of a cool original ring, which I then had to go and make. Here's my wax, which I hope to have metal multiples of for Pennsic:

We shall see if I get that Renaissance ring wax done tomorrow. This is really the absolute last minute. I think if it weren't for the last minute, I wouldn't get anything done.

Threaded | Flat

Wow! That's really cool! When are you getting to Pennsic? I'll be there from the 25th through the 2nd.

The ring project is very cool, indeed. Thanks for sharing.

Tremendously gorgeous, as usual!

That is cool. You do such good work.

Dammit. Now I'm in heavy covet mode.

Oh, how awesome. I love seeing things like this, thank you so much for sharing!

Very cool!

That wax looks similar to a ring I photographed in the Cluny. Always intended to try making one of those...

You're so talented.

Neat stuff! Can't wait for you to be finished so you can get on that strawberry leaves project... ;-)

Holy crap! What a COOL ring! Nice job cleaning it up. By the way, I am really liking the stirrup ring I bought from you. People are puzzled that I got a garnet stone instead of something green. One does not live by green alone!

Gorgeous, as always!!