Barnorama All Fun In The Barn
There’s nothing wrong with buying your wedding ring, but this couple wanted to do things differently.
Engagements and marriages are full of traditions that most people follow (but probably have no idea how they actually started). Some people, however, make their own traditions. As a result, their weddings are as unique as their love and relationship.
Instead of buying their wedding rings, one couple decided to do something a little different. They bought some gold… and then proceeded to make their wedding rings.
“We are getting married this summer. We opted to make our own rings and decided on fairly simple 18k white gold bands. The raw material is melted and poured into a cast.”
“This is what the cast looks like. There is something really cool about the idea that our rings will be made out of the same piece of metal.”
“The ingot begins the slow process of getting stretched and squished. Essentially it goes through a series of industrial strength pasta presses – one to “square” the ingot (pictured here) and then another to flatten the metal to the approximate width/thickness.”
“Again, using the magic of levers, the band begins to take shape.”
“This is actually a pretty slow process, as you want to shape the band without giving it a twist or breaking the metal.”
“Once the ends come together, the excess is sawed by hand (gold is expensive and even the little shavings are scavenged for processing and recycling). Not pictured, but the ring is then pressed in a series of decreasingly small cone-shaped sizers until the ends meet.”
“Once the ends come together, the ring is soldered with slightly softer gold. This is very difficult – there isn’t much difference between the melting point of the band and the metal used for the solder. There is actually a lot of heating and quenching – any time you put the metal under stress (rolling, pressing etc.) you heat it up and quench it to release the excess tension in the metal.”
“There is a missing photo here, but the ring is placed in a circular roller that both shapes the top and increases interior diameter. By this point the rings have a nice domed top but the inside is flat. While the outside is shaped via roller, there is no way to do that on the inside, so the interior must be shaped by hand.”
“The interior, once shaped, is pretty rough. Smoothing is done via rotary tool, sandpaper, polishing cloth, and whatever else you can get your hands on that will remove material smoothly. The ring gets VERY hot from the friction so you end up taking frequent breaks to give your toasty digits a rest.”
“Blurry but you can see the interior is becoming nice and smooth.”
“Just about done – they look pretty good here but they need a good final polish….”
“…. which happens nice and quickly.”
“The finished product! We are very excited to wear these rings and we love that there is an interesting story behind their creation.”
There are many ways you can express love for another people. Some people say it and some people show affection. Other people spend hours in a hot workshop, molding gold ingot into a physical representation of love. It is awesome. Share their hard work by clicking below!