How To Make A Hammered Silver Ring

1. How To Make A Hammered Silver Ring Intro: in this class, I'm gonna show you how to make beautiful standing silver rings with simple tools. By the end of the class, you learn how to create rings from sheet silver on. You'll let a couple of different finishing techniques, such as high polish or ah, hammered texture for more of our rustic feel. Making simple bands like these is ah, awesome. Begin, a silversmith in Project On involves many skills, such as soldering shaping using files and Embry papers polishing and even, like I mentioned some text oring. By the end of the class, you have the confidence to get your tools out on stop making rings of your own. And, of course, these make beautiful stand alone products that you can sell. Or you can combine your newly found metal smiting skills with other mediums, such as wood on acrylics to make truly interesting jewelry designs. So this tutorials go to be quite lengthy and in depth. But it should be totally worth it, because by the end you will have learned how to make silver rings the way that island, which was entirely by hand. And of course, when you've learned that that it's easy for you to go off on experiment with other power tools such as lathes that could speed all the processes up. So without further ado, let's get the tools out skin into the workshop in this, have some fun. 2. Preparing The Sheet Silver: The first lesson in this class is very much about preparation. So to make rings with the nice, hammered or funny polished finish, I like to work with one mil thick for 1.2 mil thick silver sheet, I think any center than this Sunday become a bit too flimsy. I'm in any thicker because very difficult to work with. So one mil thick is my favorite. On the first job is to figure out exactly how much silver sheet you need to make the rink. To do this, I take a digital caliper on my measure, the diameter on a ring Mandrell off the ring size I need to make I normally like to go half a size under. So in this case, I want to make a size 9/2 ring. So I measured the diameter of a size nine. So I take the thickness of the Mao at the diameter of the ring size and then multiply that by 3.143 or pie, as you might recognize from school s O. In this case, it was one plus 19 by 16 times 3.143 and it gave me like 63.36 mil, but as the total length I needed to cut from the sheet. So before I could cut the actual length from the sheet, I needed to set up my jeweler's saw. And I thought this might be useful to show you like how to put the blade in what sawing is all about. Basically, so to put, played in, Um, I mean, it's different strokes for different folks. Really. I like to have my the teeth of the blade facing downwards, but I just kind of secure them into the soul frame, using the little turning knobs you'll see here. There's initially Blade is quite slack, but on my soul frame, then there's like a believer that you pull over. I'm tightens the blade up. So before any soaring commences, you want that blade to be nice and tight in the saw offering. So to prep for the silver sheet for sewing it is good to get it up nice and flat. But this silver sheet was Samia kneeled, so it was very easy to go on a bender manipulate, but I just needed to bend that out until it was completely flat before making a mark using my digital calipers to show how much to cut. So with my, uh, mark on my silver sheet made this time too, go ahead and cut that out. Using the sword now, just never want to show you quickly how I hold the silver on the bench peg so I could obscure in place with my thumb on. Then I put my fingers in like a scissor shape over the bench pink. Move on my fingers, out of the way and then take my index finger on kind of secure on the outside of the bench . Peg on, then grip it all down nice and tight so that the, you know silver stays in place while I saw. So this is just my technique of holding and in place. I works for me, but I encourage you to find your own your own coal for making rings. There's nothing really too complicated about the sewing is pretty much risk sawing a straight line in this instance, so I mean, it's quite tricky to get these jewelers sores to get going. Initially, you see allowed a few problems when I was filming this, but eventually I did get it going on, then it's just a simple matter off. Just take it easy. Just letting the sore do the work. Just moving up and down. Move your hand up and down in a consistent sawing motion. Just keeping that blade of 90 degrees to the battle So you see that actually cheated with this ring as I like to get all my silver sheet. But the exact sort of wits off the rings and I'm going to be making this is actually an eight mil wide silver sheet just able to cut, cut out the length that you need without any further soaring. It was just speed things up a little. One of my favorite things about silversmith thing is when you you finish sewing on, then you can take the plastic wrapper off your silver. So I recommend you really take your time and enjoy this be because it's strangely satisfying. So I just thought I didn't believe that for your enjoyment, you are welcome. So after cutting my piece of silver, I notice that my edges were a little bit wonky on. This is not ideal because when you sold both edges together, you want them to make a nice seamless seem. So in order to get that seems seamless. I took a couple of files on just filed down the edges of the silver, just cut to kind of make sure that they were that they be nice and flat on would sit together flush when it comes to shaping on soldering the solar together. Hope that makes sense. It's probably easier for me to show you and explain it. 3. Annealing and Pickling: So before moving on to the fun stuff of soldering, I wanted to tell you guys about the process of a kneeling on. Also pickling. No, I'm no particle physicists or anything, so I can't really explain this in scientific terms. But a kneeling is basically what you heat silver or gold up to like a glowing orange. It becomes softer on. Of course, when it becomes softer, it's easy. Teoh Bend and manipulate your well. And so before, kind of shaping this piece of flat silver into a ring shape. I am. Neil did so to do this, you just take your soldering torch. Just heat the metal evenly. I'm until it's a nice until there's a nice orange glow. When it's what is glowing orange, you just take it in a tweezers Really important. Don't touch this with your fingers because you will burn yourself. You can quench it, so that's a kneeling pretty much whenever you start hammering or gonna working your Matal, I will become harder on so you could kneel it as many times you need to to make it soft after you of ah, kneeled or soldered silver, you'll notice that got to go black weird colors. This is oxygen ization, basically to remove the organization. Use Ah, light chemical acid, which in the trade is called pickle? No, I use like a safety pickle. It's like non toxic on, and I just kind of filled up a little jar hot water. According to the instructions on the packet, It is good to keep your pickle boom, but it's pretty self explanatory. Really, You put the oxidized metal into the pickle on the pickle would clean it off, so you can either do that was just warm water from the cattle in a glass jar. Or what I like to do. Is Mika kind of like a band Marie in a crock Pots that I got from eBay, which then helps to keep the pickle nice and warm. And, of course, it works better when it's I would recommend getting a better tweezers. The mind for when you remove from the pot pretty much take it out of the pickle, which is an acid, and then put that into a bacon soldier solution, which is an alkaline to neutralize it. And then you will see that your silver is nice and clean, ready to solder 4. How To Solder Silver Rings: So in this lesson we go to learn all about soldering rings, which can be intimidating. But hopefully this will demystify the whole process. So after a kneeling that lovely piece of silver as time Teoh, get it ready for soldering now, To do this, you need to get both ends off the piece of silver Teoh to meet up with each other. Essentially, so I like to do is take like a socket or Mandrell I'm kind of bent it into Ah, almost on a millennium Falcon styles cheap. They're like pinch the Millennium Falcon to gather my fingers. I just use a rawhide hammer to kind of hammer Both both ends down until they so, like meet in the middle. So at this stage, we should look like, kind like a D for longbow kind of shape and then to ensure that both edges of the silver meter perfectly against each other uh, take a half a round nose pliers with the wrong But on the inside of the ring, not Amar up the metal bad. I kind of push one edge under the other and then prise them apart my fingers and then flip the ring over on kind of pushed the other side under on, then prise them apart. And then you got a lot of tension in the ring, which is kind of like holding both edges off the the joint on the seam together nice and tightly now. Ideally, you want as little kind of gaps or light shining through that Seamus Possible just quick introduction to solder there. Three different types of solder or soldering silver. Three main types. There's easy medium on hard on. The difference between them is that they melt a different temperatures so easy solder melts at the lowest temperature. Eso for this bring. I used easy solder, so I just took I'm a wire snips and just snipped off a few little bits of solder. Now your piece of solder don't need to be huge. Kind of pretty small, really. I'd say smaller the batters than the melt easier. But in the case of this ring, I stepped six pieces of solder. I mean, I'm not sure if you need that many. Some people might need less if they have more experience of more skill. But I like to use six because it's better to have um too many than too few before soldering , then time to scare up some flux. So to make the flux, I use a borax addition. A borax code, and all you need to do is just add water into the bowl and then kind of swish the cone around like a past land border until you end up with, I think, Ah, thick white paste on That's the soldier influx borax. So with the soldier cut with the borax paste made, all I did was just took a paintbrush on. I set up by ring with the scene facing down. You see, this is my soldering set up by typically used for rings where just kind of take one of my tweezers holding the ring like I said with the seam facing down. Then I take a paintbrush, paint on a law flux on either side of the scene on then, using the same paint brush on a little tiny bit of flux and stop kind of place, the tiny piece of solder three on either side. Off the scene, I'm with my solder set in place. It was finally time to move on to the fun part two soldering so soldering could be quite intimidating if you've never done it before. Hopefully watching me do it in this simple fashion, I will give me some confidence. So the trick is to fire up your torch. I mean, I only have, like, a little handheld torch, so I just fired up. Full blast on the truck is to initially the pieces evenly as possible without really concentrating the flame off the solder too much and you'll see that the the soldering flux of the borax kind of goes in three stages. First of all, it will kind of fluff up like a cloud on. You'll see that the soldier kind of goes all over the place so you can just concentrate your flame over the the flux a little bit to control without goes. Then the fuck's Caramelizes on. You see, they're kind of like looks a bit read like a red puddle. I'm kind of when you get to this stage, you start to see that the ring is heating up. That's when you can kind of concentrate your flame over the solder on the puddle of flux on your see that the solder flows. I always say it looks like t 1000 from Terminator to kind of just melts down into a puddle of metal on that it there we have it easy peasy. So with the ring sold ID kind of should look a bit messy and oxidized, but that's nothing that pickle pot consort out. So at this stage just popped it into my still warm pickle for about 30 minutes to clean. 5. Shaping and Clean Up: So in this lesson, I'll show you how I turned this de shaped piece of Silva into an actual rigging shape. So after soldering, um, I put there in the pickle pot. Then, after the pickle part, I put that in a solution of baking soldier and water to neutralize the acid on the first job was to get this piece of D shaped silver kind of wide enough to fit over a metal mandrell. So to do that, I just use the rawhide hammer and just give it a few taps on either end just to kind of open it up enough to fit over one of these steel ring Mandel's. Then about this stage, you just take the rawhide hammer, put the ring over the steel mandrell on, then just sort of gently hammer it out until his ring shaped. This technique takes a bit of practice, but in summary, you just want to kind of continually apply force down the mandrell, turn the ring around while hammering on every now and again take the ring off kind of switch it around. Just be mindful that the mandrell is tapered so you don't want a hammer. A one and one edge more than the other. Because then you'll end up with you know, one side being a larger in diameter than the other is good. Just continuously turn it round on. Take it off. The man drove back, but havering was done on You can see they that I was left with something that started to resemble a ring. But there's a lot of leftover solder on kind of marring marks from the hammering at this stage. Eso really the next job is Teoh. Clean off the solder, kind of flatten out the edges on just make it more presentable in general. So I would do this with files number to file Onda number four file. Typically, I like to use half round needle files, but I mean, you can use a larger file If you'd like to go a bit quicker for the inside of the ring. I just use the file to gonna clean over the area. Whether it was the access solder on, you'll see that I'm kind of moving in the direction off the ring rather than like, across it. So just kind of went over the ring in this case with the two files kind of working through the insides and then the same for the outside, just cleaning off the salt of the joint until, you know, you wouldn't even know that it was there. Really. Then, after a few minutes of clean up with files, did a bit of an inspection when that was all looking good, you'll see that I didn't quite get in my silver lined up properly. So there was this kind of little bridges on either side of the ring. And so again, I just used my files just to kind of even those out, just really by any means necessary to kind of flatten about. Just make sure that the the ring looked seamless on presentable. Whatever that may mean in your language. Filing, filing, filing, then I just had a little inspection to see how we would do it. In my opinion, I thought that was looking pretty good. I also then did a quick size check, I remember said at the start of the video, I want this to be a size 9.5, actually made the ring to this stage, and it came to a size 8.5, so just introduce you to a tool. It's not necessarily essential, but it's very useful. The half This is a ring stretcher. I pretty much even just put the ring on to the Mandrell top on their one. When you push the lever up and expands the ring, which is really cool. I'm really good for making rings that little bit bigger. Now it's good to do. There's gradually eso I gotta do like two pumps at a time when you see there that I went from a size 8.5 to liken eight and 3/4 and I just carried on and did this until the ring was just slightly below a size 9.5. Then it was back. Thio more filing just to you. Kind of remove any tooling marks on what I actually did with the files here was used them. Teoh put a taper on the inside and the outside edges of the ring to make it more comfortable toe way. This is a necessary, but I mean, it's just a design choice that I like. I personally like rings that I have like a little tape on the inside, so I just took a few minutes to go over and, you know, just put a lice that'll like a battle over the inside and the outside edge. So the best way to do this really is just to keep the ring movin, keep the file moving, not concentrate in any one spot for too long because you know you don't want any come, like flat spots the form in the case of this ring, but just kind of went over just meticulously, really. Just kind of filing away any areas I thought they needed, needed some work. And then after filing, I'm I moved on to using a few grits off emery paper, which is like an especially fine sandpaper than the same way as you would typically sand would. I just moved to progressively finer grits. So I started at 2 to 40. Grit, 500 grit, 1200. Great. And then finally, a 2000 grit. I mean, arguably, I think that perhaps the 2 40 great is a bit too aggressive, so I just used that for kind of taken more material away on the inside of babbles. But I just kind of sanded the edges of the ring by putting some sandpaper flat on my desk and then moving the edges of the ring over a figure of eight motion just to kind of sand the edges on. Then for the inside and the outsides. I just used bits of ripped off emery paper with my hands. But, I mean, you could do this with buff in sticks for, you know, doubles wrapped in emery paper. Just, you know, the stage is just about going over. I'm trying to remove tooling marks on leaving a nice, smooth finish before moving on to polishing. So in the case, this ring, I was really happy, Seamless, nice and smooth. No tubular marks on looking good for a polish. 6. Polishing and Hammered Texture: Okay, We're in the final stages of the tutorial. Now we will cover. Making the ring nice and shiny will put in texture on their. So for polishing, I mean, I use a This is just a Dremel, the flak shaft. I set it on a fairly fast speed, like three or four. I dearly, you'd get a better fact shaft than this one of the Ford on kind of a pendant Rotary tools. But I only have this for polishing, so I just use some felt polishing pads. Typically, I use to polishing compounds. The 1st 1 I uses a brown compound on this is known in the jewelry trade as Tripoli. This is quite a breaks. If so, I start with Tripoli, just kind of load up the polishing pad with the Tripoli ongoing work. My way over the entire ring inside, outside both edges on the trek really is to kind of keep the polishing wheel moving on, not concentrate on any one spot for too long, um, on something. You could do this for a long as you like to kind of get the ring nice and shiny. Now, in between compounds, I like to clean the ring off with some, like Kitchen de Greaser. I mean, you could just do this entirely with degree surf, but I have an ultrasonic cleaner, and there's this good to move on to the finer grit off the portion compound when the ring is completely clean. So the ultrasonic cleaner kind of sends vibrations through a liquid. In this case, water, I wish, helps to kind of remove contaminants from surfaces. Science. So with all the contaminants removed from the services of the ring, I moved on to the second polishing compound. I also changed the polishing head not to contaminate the finer portion compound with more abrasive won. The second compound eyes the red one, which is also known in the jewelry world as rouge. I just use the same technique. I just wept over the entire ring inside, outside both edges. I'm just kind of brought it to a nice, beautiful shine, so ideally, you'd want some kind of ah dust extraction system going on for the purposes of filming out . Just do it in my workshop, but you'll see there so that came out beautifully. So after a good cleaning, you can literally just leave the ring they It's just a highly polished ring, and you'll see some snazzy photos I took on my DS saw. So yeah, these, on their own, make really nice products that you can you list on your at the shop or whatever. But in this case, I wanted to show you on alternative way to texture a ring, which is to give it a Hammond finish. And so to give her a Hammond finish, I actually use one of these ball peen hammers, which has, like, are rounded over peen more. One edge. I just put it onto the mandrell on just kind of Give it a like Tappy Tap tap with the ball end of the hammer on. You'll see it kind of leaves like a nice dimpled fell. It finish kind of look like lots of Legler or craters in the ring. So there's a little section, but what I generally do is just use that ball peen hammer to go around the entire outer circumference of the ring. Just remembering Teoh kind of take the ring off on swap, you know, swap the edges around because you know the the hammering will enlarge the ring. You don't want it to be larger on one side than the other due to the taper on the Mandrell . So if you're going to make a hammered ring is definitely good to make it like a full size undersize in the first place to allow for expansion when you're hammering. But you see there that's a gorgeous, rustic looking finish on The hammered ring has marred up the inside of the rings slightly as well. So it's good to go over with a few more grits of emery paper and some another polish just to clean it up. But that is the end off this tutorial, my hope that is being helpful. I'm in here some snazzy pictures of the hammered rings, and you could do this with Silva also works for other precious metals. Like all of the gold varieties you see in this example that I hammered it a bit harder in certain places to create, like more far more of a dimple. Look 7. Go Be Creative!: so thank you for watching the class. That's the end. I hope that you enjoyed it. I hope that you lead. You know, the lessons that you need on gained the confidence that you need to make silver rings. As I mentioned in my introduction, you could take these skills to create stand alone products such as just plain hammered silver rings. Or you can combined these skills with different mediums. Such a zoo would work. Relics were just getting creative to make some really interesting and unique jewelry designs. Thank you very much for watching. If you're watching this on skill shape, then please follow me for more tutorials. I should have more coming out week on week. Andi, I would love to see any work that you produce. So please post some photos and let me know how you're getting on. That's it for me. Thanks very much watching. I hope to see you in the next month.